President Obama

For the past few months I have been pointing out aspects about Barack Obama that I found troubling. Despite his presidential victory, those aspects still remain, and I still remain troubled by them. I've heard several pundits and news people over the past couple days conclude that they still don't really know who Obama is, and yet now he is president. We know he is ultra liberal, but we don't know how that will translate once he is in office. We don't know how much power Pelosi and Reid will have over Obama. We don't know what kind of constraints will be placed on all of them by the current economy or by the unknown "9/11's" that may come along and change their course. We can assume that Obama will be calm and slow with decisions . . we just don't know whether his decisions will be sound or if they will end up causing even more problems.

These next couple years will be "fun" to watch politically. I'm not sure Obama can live up to all the hype he has created for himself. He is sure to disappoint people who have blindly followed him, counting on him to provide free gas, a free education, free health care, free housing, no wars, and no taxes. No doubt Obama will conclude at some point early in his presidency that the economy handed to him was so bad that he will not be able to fulfill his promises. We still have not heard an exit strategy for Afghanistan. We know taxes will go up once the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 . . still no talk about that. Still no real understanding what kind of class warfare he is about to unleash.

Today I am mildly depressed. Listening to Pelosi, Reid, and now Obama is like fingers on a chalkboard. Everything is now on them though. They cannot pass along their excuses or their responsibility onto the Republicans. They have to answer to their miscues and their own policies. At least you would think so. But one look at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, at Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, and you realize how accountability has a short memory. And so do promises. How many people can remember the promises made by George Bush in 2000, or even in 2004? I do know that "change" was part of his campaign in 2000; but the point is that within a couple years we usually forget what a politician was promising during the campaign. So 2-3 years from now most of Obama's supporters probably won't care that he is not giving them free anything. They probably won't realize that his brand of politics is pretty much the same as every other politician who came before him, and that Washington is still much the same. They may not even recognize the slow erosion of the 1st Amendment.

Up to now Obama has had virtually no record. For the past couple years he has been speaking in nuances that fit well in a college classroom or on a stage, but now he has to mold those nuances into policy. We'll see how all of this jives together. This is what we get when we hire someone who is inexperienced and untested. We have no idea what he will do or how he will perform. We have nothing to look at for an example. Like I said, this should be fun.