Techies for Barack Obama!

Marc Andreessen endorses Obama!

This is Andreessen's thoughtful, straightforward endorsement of our boy, which he bases on an hour and a half meeting he and his wife had with Obama early in 2007.

For those behind in your techie celebrity gossip, Marc Andreessen is the silicon valley boy wonder partly responsible for the first big web browser and co-founder of Netscape (that thing you used before Mozilla Firefox came along--I always liked how the stars on the icon were shooting-falling while your page was loading). The tagline quote on his blog is "I've seen the future and it works."

Excerpts from the Andreessen's endorsement:

Obama is smart (techies like smart people)
[I]t's also apparent when you interact with him that you're dealing with one of the intellectually smartest national politicians in recent times, at least since Bill Clinton. He's crisp, lucid, analytical, and clearly assimilates and synthesizes a very large amount of information -- smart....

Obama is not radical (techies fear extremists on either end)
This is not some kind of liberal revolutionary who is intent on throwing everything up in the air and starting over... take a look at his policy positions on any number of issues and what strikes you is how reasonable, moderate, and thoughtful they are. And in person, that's exactly what he's like... what comes across -- in both his questions and his answers -- is calmness, reason, and judgment.

Obama's world view is not dominated by the 1960s (that irrelevant time period before the letters "e" and "i" were prefixes for "mail" and "pod," respectively)
He's a post-Boomer. Most of the Boomers I know are still fixated on the 1960's in one way or another -- generally in how they think about social change, politics, and the government. It's very clear when interacting with Senator Obama that he's totally focused on the world as it has existed since after the 1960's -- as am I, and as is practically everyone I know who's younger than 50.

The post-Boomer point is, I think, excellent, and a different way of saying what I've been trying to articulate. Obama's not just slick at acting hip; he seems like one of us because he actually is. I think Andreessen also likes post-Boomers because we know how to restart a computer all by ourselves.

This is an endorsement I would want my Washington DC-based parents and brother to read. None of them is a Democrat but my family has a strong penchant for the tech dork view of the world, because that is what we all are...except me. Marc Andreessen and his wife also gave money to Mitt Romney, whatever that tells you. (Hint: he's not liberal.)

Also, included in this endorsement, are Obama's answers to Andreessen's reservations about Obama, which he straight up asked him.

1. 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. [And yes we have, as I posted about here.]

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... By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

This... speaks even more to his ability to recruit and manage a top-notch group of campaign professionals and volunteers -- another key leadership characteristic. When you compare this to the awe-inspiring discord, infighting, and staff turnover within both the Clinton and McCain campaigns up to this point -- well, let's just say it's a very interesting data point.

2. We then asked, well, what about foreign policy -- should we be concerned that you just don't have much experience there?

He said, directly, two things.

First, he said, I'm on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I serve with a number of Senators who are widely regarded as leading experts on foreign policy -- and I can tell you that I know as much about foreign policy at this point as most of them.

Being a fan of blunt answers, I liked that one.

But then he made what I think is the really good point.

He said -- and I'm going to paraphrase a little here: think about who I am -- my father was Kenyan; I have close relatives in a small rural village in Kenya to this day; and I spent several years of my childhood living in Jakarta, Indonesia. Think about what it's going to mean in many parts of the world -- parts of the world that we really care about -- when I show up as the President of the United States. I'll be fundamentally changing the world's perception of what the United States is all about.

He's got my vote.

Awesome.