Not an AMerican, but here my opinion. Obama is going to be a disaster. The man knows little about things, his ideas are bookish, his much touted “experience” is that he lived in Indonesia. His comment of foreign policy and the economy have been off IMO. The “bomb Pakistan” comment was really really immature, yes to kill a few terrorists lets go to war with a nuclear power!
The US really needs change, its needs a Mrs Thatcher. I am not sure an Obama is the what is needed.
Huh?
And “bomb bomb Iran” is any better?
What do you think we will have in 4 years if not a country? I can’t imagine what kind of scenario* leads to dissolution of the country in 48 months.
*OK, I’ve read excerpts from The Turner Diaries. Coherent scenario, I mean.
Shhh, you’ll just confuse them with facts. He’s not Bush and that’s all anyone needs to know.
At about 10 PM EST, when the writing was clearly on the wall that the good guys weren’t going to win this one, I went into my 3 year old son’s room to kiss him goodnight. He was most of the way asleep, but he reached up and hugged and kissed me goodnight and said “I love you Daddy”. I kissed him back and said “I love you too Jimmy, I just hope we adults haven’t fucked things up too badly tonight for your future”. I think the people of this country have just made a grave mistake, but that’s the nature of a representative democracy. We’re allowed to make mistakes.
All that being said, I have one foremost and paramount statement I’d like to make:
Barack Obama is the new president(elect) of my country, and I support him fully as our president.
Let me repeat that:
Barack Obama is the new president(elect) of my country, and I support him fully as our president.
Is that clear? I opposed Mr. Obama in this election, and I voted for the other guy. I think Mr. McCain would have been a much better choice, but that point is moot now. My personal feelings, beliefs and preferences were taken into account as a part of the larger whole, and that larger whole disagreed. shrug OK, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I think I’m right here(who doesn’t), but what I think isn’t the deciding factor. What ALL of us think is, and in this case, all of us didn’t agree with me. I did not vote for Mr. Bush in either of the two previous elections. He won anyway. Because he won, I supported him as president. I did not and do not agree with many of the policies that Mr. Bush espoused, but I don’t demonize him. He’s actually done an OK job, and gotten better at it as time went on. History will be much kinder to Bush than we are today. I can look at what he did and make that observation objectively because I don’t involve myself in politics in a partisan manner. I’m an issues voter, frankly I don’t care what party someone belongs to, I care about results. I think that most of this current Bush hate is engineered in a large part for partisan political reasons, it just won Obama the election.
As I said, I’m an issues voter. I didn’t like either of the candidates all that much, but I thought McCain was the lesser of two weasels on the issues. Most Americans disagreed with me, so…Obama won. OK. Here’s my thoughts on that.
Things I like about Obama:
I like the way he speaks. I like the way he can draw people in with his oration and inspire them. I LOVE the fact that he’s black. Race relations have been a continuing wound on this country, and now that we have elected a black president, we can put to rest a lot of the “A black man can’t get a break” rheteric that pervades our national duologue all too often. He represents a final vindication of everything this country is supposed to stand for but often doesn’t in practice. I like his devotion to his family, that may not mean much, but it speaks positively to his character. Obama never used his position of power to fuck chippies for his own gratification. I think “the world” liking him is way overblown, “the world” acts in it’s own best interest, but it can’t hurt to be popular.
Things I dislike about Obama
He’s dangerously naive about international relations. He thinks that by extending respect to every tin pot dictator across the globe by meeting them as equals that that respect will be reciprocated. That lowers the US to their level, and they’ll just eat it up. That’s dangerous. I believe that he honestly thinks that the job of government is to ensure an equality of outcome rather than to ensure an equality of opportunity. He honestly believes in socialism; government exists to share the wealth. It was clear in his unscripted response to Joe the Plumber, it was clear in the interview he gave where he said the big failure of the civil rights movement was in not redistributing wealth to the least fortunate members of society. It was clear ( and this is the scariest thing of all) when he said that he thought it wrong that the Constitution wrongly limited what government could do for the people. Limiting government (however foreign a concept that we seem to think that is) was the entire point of the Constitution.
Frankly, based upon his positions, he scares me. No matter how we may have been conditioned as a population to hate George Bush, Obama is a cure worse than the disease. That is my thought, based upon what he has said he wants to do as president. I may be wrong. As a loyal American, I HOPE I’m wrong. Time will tell.
Still, those are all just policy issues. Let me repeat again:
Barack Obama is the new president(elect) of my country, and I support him fully as our president.
Is that clear enough for you?
Current Mood: distressed
ETA: Two days later I feel a little more optimistic because the Democrats did not get 60 seats in the Senate. Assuming that holds, there will at least be some potential break on Obama’s more radical plans.
Hopefully the White House staff will get Obama educated on that issue. There have to be quite a few core personnel that would have stayed there no matter who the next president was.
I almost didn’t post it. It’s too late anyway, Obama is elected and what matters is if in fact his experience abroad informs him enough to be a worthwhile President.
And I should add that I agree with Weirddave -
I didn’t vote for him, I don’t support most of his policies, but he is the President.
McCain wasn’t my first (or second) choice for the Republican nom either. Maybe Romney or Giuliani would have won where McCain lost - I don’t know. And I don’t care. Obama is the one we got. If he does well, good for him. If he fucks up, phasers on Mock, and full ahead, warp five, Mr. Sulu.
I’m dissapointed in my fellow Americans but not suprised, I don’t consider myself patriotic.
I don’t feel too badly, we have had a good President for eight years and it is not heaven, we had a bad one for eight years before that and it wasn’t hell. Who is in charge of the government is not that important.
I feel glad that the Democrats picked someone so inexperienced who has never run anything but his mouth. By the time he learns how to use his power and influence, his first term will be almost over. Nancy Pelosi will be running the country for a while and she is enough to turn even the most casual observer of politics against the Democrat party.
I am afraid for the Iraqi and Afghan people who are about to be abandoned in their time of need but America has survived worse than Barack Hussein Obama and it is still the greatest nation on earth.
On the plus side now that racism is a thing of the past hopefully our political speech will be more constructive and have less whining.
I lived there for four years. The (quite plausible, now) prospect that America may become like Europe is the stuff of my nightmares.
Mine, too. How this meme got started that Europe was the gold standard for how to behave and be governed has always been a mystery to me. It’s crowded, smoky, and everybody lives in cramped little tinderbox houses and apartments. Their cars are little and they look funny, and the traffic sucks. And I recently found out that France has a Dept. of Unallowed Baby Names so as to protect France’s babies from future ridicule. Can you say slippery-slope-with-a-toboggan-at-the-top? Yeah, I thought that you could.
And no, I’ve never been to Europe. Why do you ask? 
I have no proof, but I think the Pakistan and Syria attacks were not a surprise for the governments of the respective countries. I would bet the US told them we were going to attack some targets inside their borders and said: “Hey, we are going to kill some guys that are bad for both of our interests. You can claim you didn’t know anything about it, act pissed off to keep your more radical subjects happy, and we will make some kind of token apology to help you save face.”
Although, not that I think it’s a good idea, but I wonder just how Pakistan would “nuke” the USA if we pissed them off enough. Might be able to reach our troops in Iraq, but the mainland…not so much. They are holding them back for India more than anything else (if they even work). Hell, I believe India would love for Pakistan to attack us, it would give them an excuse to “help” us and probably cause the first nuclear war in the progress.
Kinda the same reason I get a kick out of my friends that are worried about a Chinese invasion…uh, yeah they got a butt-load of troops, but how would they get them here? Or the guys I know who are terrified that Obama will take their guns…how, exactly is he going to do it? Outlaw all guns and then go door-to-door collecting them? EVERYBODY PANIC!!!
I’m a little bummed, but he seems okay. I can only hope that most of his redistribution policies are blocked in Congress, and no major international incident pops up in the first year or so, since he needs some experience with that at first.
The most hopeful thing for me is that he will be smart enough to stop the raving harpy Pelosi and her ilk from running the show. They are like poison, and alienate everybody except for the shrews in their camp. Picking Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff should put the brakes on that, but his brand of Chicago politics makes me shiver for a whole 'nother reason.
The thing I am most afraid of is a grand sweeping program like Universal Health Care. There needs to be a special panel of blue ribbon economists and health professionals working on this for a while to make everyone aware of all of the possible side effects financially. And by then, hopefully the Pubs will gain ground in the midterms, and vote it down.
He’s awfully smart, but awfully optimistic and narrow-viewed.