Hillary has been hammering away at the idea of experience and her thirty-five years working for change. I'm having a hard time finding those thirty-five "agent for change" years. What was her contribution in the Clinton White House - the eight highest-profile years of the thirty-five? Nobody really knows, because her staff, according to a recent Newsweek article, was often instructed "Don't leave any fingerprints."

How many of those thirty-five years was Hillary accountable to voters? I count seven, since her swearing in as a Senator in January 2001. Seven years of having all her activities watched and documented, all her decisions in full view. And on balance she's been a good Senator.

But as First Lady of Arkansas, and then in the White House, Mrs. Clinton was accountable to no-one. No high ranking staffer in Little Rock or DC could operate with so few consequences - she could not be fired. When she did have policy-making authority in the health insurance debate, she fared terribly, which resulted in an even lower public profile.

I was disappointed when, in the January 5th Democratic debate Senator Clinton took credit for the economic policies leading to a budget surplus during her husband's administration. Did she really play a substantial role? A few minutes later Senator Obama very gently suggested otherwise, saying "I actually give Bill Clinton enormous credit for having balanced those budgets during those years."

Though she's naturally associated with her husband, Hillary's profile in the White House seems much closer to Dick Cheney than Bill Clinton. She has won two elections to the US Senate, but most of her thirty-five years of experience was spent working behind the scenes, out of the public eye. The secrecy surrounding her health-care task-force reminds me of a certain Vice President's energy task force. Sure, she's been scrutinized for her hairstyle, for Whitewater and her lack of public response to Monica Lewinsky. But at the time she wasn't governing and accountable as an elected, or appointed, official. She didn't balance the budget in DC or Little Rock, she didn't bring Israelis and Palestinians together to sign the Oslo accords, she didn't sign the Family and Medical Leave Act.

Her campaign web site says she was instrumental in getting FMLA passed - but what did she do? Was Hillary reminding Bill every day 'get FMLA passed'? Calling Senators, as the brand-new First Lady, and urging them to support FMLA? Nobody knows.

So what counts toward that 35 year record as an agent of change? Do two years at Yale Law and a year of post-graduate study count in the thirty-five years? Do teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School and sitting on the board of Wal-Mart count? What does it mean to be "instrumental" when you have no official role and there is no public record of your actions?

I like Hillary Clinton, she would make a fine President, far superior to any of the Republican candidates. But I don't think she has the experience, or natural ability, or interest, to forge big coalitions and partnerships the way Barack Obama can. Maybe she did some consensus-building in the White House, but so far she won't tell us about it.

Obama served for eight years in the Illinois Senate before the last three years in the US Senate -- eleven years in elected office, eleven years of recorded decisions and accountability to voters. I'm sure Hillary worked very hard as First Lady. But she won't show her work, so I can't give her credit for Bill Clinton's accomplishments. Perhaps Hillary will explain her previous role in the White House in more detail, justifying her claim to being the most experienced candidate. That would be good for the debate.

Accountability and transparency count for something when we evaluate a candidate's experience. In these areas, Senator Obama exceeds Senator Clinton, making her experience argument too weak to change my mind about supporting the junior Senator from Illinois.

How many election cycles can we afford to waste on the least offensive, most compromising, most pragmatic, and least inspiring candidate? At least, with someone like Gore or Kerry, you didn't have a large portion of the population hating the candidate. In Hillary you have a pragmatic centrist who, through almost no fault of her own, has long been written off by "old, grouchy, backward, conservative, white guy" voters.

I'm betting Obama can get more middle-of-the road independents, more moderate Republicans, and more people who usually don't vote. He's already doing it in the primaries, and Iowa is something of a farm state.

I talk to people who are on the fence and worry about racism. It didn't just evaporate last Thursday, it's real. I talked to a woman yesterday who will vote for Edwards in the primary because she can't say "President Obama" and "His middle name is worse!"

Do we build a practical, cynical strategy out of pandering to that woman's fear of people whose names (and skin color?) are different from their own? We could restrict our candidate choices to white guys from the South... Of course, "backward, conservative, white guy" voters aren't going to vote for him either. We've been twisting our Democratic candidates in knots trying to pick up a few more of those voters, and it hasn't worked. It will never work. And it doesn't have to. There are fewer and fewer voters in that profile every year, numerically and as a proportion of the larger electorate.

So we'll have to let the woman uncomfortable with "President Obama" go, and bring in two new voters to make up the difference. It's more work, but it's the right thing to do.

Let's see the racism. Let's have that "conversation on race" that President Clinton imagined in the '96 election. Let's let the right-wing machine put all its hate and bile out in the sunshine and see how people react. Let's watch the Republican nominee try to distance himself from the filth his surrogates embrace.

I think, with a warm, smart, unflappable candidate like Obama, we win that fight.

(After I wrote this, I saw that Deval Patrick makes some of the same points, though much more eloquently, in a Boston Globe Op-Ed today)