The Obama followthrough

It’s now been one week since America elected Barack Hussein Obama its next president. I’ve withheld public judgment until now because I’ve been trying to regain control of my emotions. Had I spewed out what was on top of my mind last Tuesday night, I would be no better than the leftists that wrongly accuse the right of hatred and speak unfiltered from the heart.

Obama will definitely put liberal justices on the Supreme Court bench; therefore, America has moved schizophrenically moved from an all-liberal national government to an all-conservative one, to a moderate one with a conservative president, and now back to an all-liberal one. Though it was the likely scenario with George Bush’s approval rating at historically low numbers, I’m still disappointed in America. It put no check on the Democrats’ agenda. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid inquired about using some of the $700-billion financial industry bailout plan on the auto industry. That would be deceitful and against the law, but America has spoken.

Obama will be my president on January 20, 2009. I will not move to another country, nor hollowly threaten to do so – as many liberals did when Bush was re-elected in 2004. I will support him with a sharp tongue. Notable conservatives have moved on from the McCain campaign very quickly and pointed out that Obama has done nothing wrong as president yet. These same conservatives noted what a fine victory speech he gave last Tuesday night in Grant Park in Chicago. It was a nice, if dour, speech of the same variety he eloquently gave throughout his 21-month campaign.

Stop. Think about that for a minute. Our next president ran a nearly two-year presidential campaign when the country knew virtually nothing about the man – and it’s still learning quite a bit. Very impressive, and the fact that he is half black marks a pivotal moment in American history. That’s all I have to say about race. Obama had more to say, though. He told Americans that his opposition would try to scare them by pointing out that he was black and had a funny name. McCain scrupulously never mentioned Obama’s race, nor did he speak Obama’s middle name. I wonder if it was ever part of the Obama campaign’s goal to convince America it was still racist to guilt-trip it into voting for the black man on the ticket.

One of the major issues of this campaign was campaign reform. Obama agreed on virtually every reform policy John McCain backed, yet it was Obama who ran this unprecedented long and expensive campaign. He vowed to use public funds, but turned his back on that promise when he realized it would give away an advantage. He even bought a 30-minute primetime infomercial as a lead-in to the World Series! Although he socialistically espoused “spreading the wealth,” he would not share one penny with the McCain camp. These two presidential candidates had a golden opportunity to set precedents as to how to run a modern campaign. They both failed. McCain said all the right things. Obama agreed. Then Obama backed out, just like he did on the “anytime, anywhere” town hall meetings, and McCain followed suit to stay in the race. So instead of losing the election rather than his bearings, McCain lost both.

I think Obama ran a smart, but ruthless campaign. Despite the fact that as president he has done nothing right or wrong yet, there will be one of two outcomes. Either he will enact the socialist policies he advocated during his campaign, and American capitalists will resent his administration for it; or he will go back on many of his policies as he finds out they can’t feasibly be done. Either way, he will succeed, as I believe this country has shifted from center-right to center-left. The left will still want to keep likely Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, or Bobby Jindal out of the White House in 2012.

But all is fine in the Obama house at the moment, because he has the power. He has so much power that he is trying to impose his will upon the current administration by putting the blood of the auto industry bailout on Bush’s hands. America will be socialist come hell or high water. It doesn’t matter, though. To the prince, the end justifies the means.