Genghis has said that these reader posts have sucked recently, so I'm hoping to start a discussion.  This might suck too, though.  Who knows?


During this campaign season, we have seen that most politicians have a "thing" that they're known for.  Something that they're deeply passionate about when it comes to policy.  Edwards had poverty.  McCain has Iraq.  Hillary has health care/children's rights.  I know Obama wants unity, but I was wondering if anyone could point me to an overarching theme of his career regarding policy. 
 
I will list Hillary's history on her passionate issues:
 

Starting with law school:  During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[ She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free advice for the poor.   She began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.[ Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals" and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but rather courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[ The article became frequently cited in the field.   During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[ and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.   Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.   Rodham co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund, in 1977. In late 1977, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had done 1976 campaign coordination work in Indiana) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation.   Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for a total of twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she successfully obtained federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas' poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.   As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee from 1982 to 1992, where she sought to bring about reform in the state's court-sanctioned public education system.  In one of the most important initiatives of the entire Clinton governorship, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association to put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place.[   She introduced Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth in 1985, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.   Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).   In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head and be the chairwoman of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform. Clinton later acknowledged in her book, Living History, that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible.   Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997,   In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady. In 1999, she was instrumental in passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care   She worked with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and with other senators. And as a result, in 2005, Congress mandated a new form of military health care called TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS) which gives those in the Selected Reserve – a component of the Ready Reserve – an opportunity to purchase TRICARE health coverage when not on active duty.