Marc Andreessen, co-author of the world’s first graphic web browser and co-founder of Netscape Communications, has endorsed Barack Obama. It’s a thoughtful post, based on his impressions during an 1.5-hour meeting with Obama a year ago.
He writes that in person, Obama is quite authentically normal:
I’ve spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit — in fact, many of them aren’t even very good at faking it.
Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he’s with and the world around him.
And to Obama, the Internet is not just a series of tubes:
We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, on a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.
Finally, Andreessen group asked about the Senator’s experience:
We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven’t had meaningful experience as an executive — as a manager and leader of people?
He said, watch how I run my campaign — you’ll see my leadership skills in action.
At the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of his answer — political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?
Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama’s opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win — and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.
Read Andreessen’s entire post.
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