Who is Barack Obama?
John McCain has done his best to advance the idea that the electorate does not know, and reams of commentary have been written about his supposedly elusive identity and opaque character, despite his being one of the most intensively covered and unusually self-chronicled candidates in American history.
Keen to find the secret or code that will unravel the supposed mystery, his friends and enemies alike refuse to see what is in plain sight: that Obama means more or less what he says about himself and his policies. The real Obama is not terribly inspiring and may be rather dull, which is paradoxically why his administration could be far less polarizing than that of his predecessor, while being equally unsuccessful.-- DANIEL LARISONThe GOP won't have a future until it appeals to young voters again. Bush turned an entire generation blue. Obama merely mobilized it.
As a politician and policymaker, Obama distresses me; his extreme liberalism is not what the nation needs. But as a symbol -- a son of Africa elected to lead a majority-white nation that once enslaved Africans and treated their descendants with great cruelty -- Obama's rise makes me proud of my country. The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement was "We Shall Overcome." Impossible as it might have seemed scant decades ago, we have.-- JEFF JACOBYThe treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.
Our failure to stand by the one person who continued to stand by us has not gone unnoticed by our enemies. It has shown to the world how disloyal we can be when our president needed loyalty -- a shameful display of arrogance and weakness that will haunt this nation long after Mr. Bush has left the White House.
Barack Obama faced a lot of big crowds during his campaign. Now President-elect Obama faces his largest one: a country of 305 million.
Most of the people around me look like they have recovered from their hangover and caught up on their sleep since Tuesday night. And now we wait as we enter a political twilight zone where normal electoral incentives for restrained behavior can not operate. So we see the silly season of Bush still being in charge despite him being a non-entity and Obama's campaign attempting to convert itself into a governing formation. Most other nations can handle a transfer of power in a week or two as the outgoing president or premier tells the incoming executive where he leaves the extra key and that the back stairs creak at night.-- FESTERI supported George W. Bush in 2000 because I thought he had a conservative bone in his body somewhere. I supported him in 2004 because I thought him the lesser of two evils. At this point, I wouldn’t let the fool park his car in my driveway.
Image courtesy of Ringo, Have a Banana via Feministing
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