Thursday, November 6, 2008

Positives of President-elect Obama

1. The best positive we have right at this moment with Obama as President-elect is that for the first time in a long time we have the world's most popular man for our President. (It was either Ted Koppel or Neal Conan on NPR's Talk of the Nation that so succinctly pointed this out today.) Maybe some good can come of that, before the sharks of reality begin their circling. Hopefully inexperience isn't as much of an issue as it seemed it would be when he made his campaign-time blunders on foreign policy. I've decided that I do care what the rest of the world thinks. I work with many people from the other side of the world every day, and I respect them greatly. The parts of the world outside of our good-ol' US of A that I've been to are just fantastic (although they all are governed either a little worse than us, else terrifically worse).

(The sad subtext of this is that most of the world doesn't know that much about what Obama will mean for America, or for them for that matter. Their media is even more carefully selected for them than ours is for us. That's my experience, anyway. Bush rubbed the international media wrong from the start; a non-Bush president was going to be popular with them at first almost regardless. But some of their excitement obviously stems from good points 2 and 3 that follow.)

2. The second best positive: the rejoicing of Black America. I think that they deserve a lot of positive press for a change. I feel that I was raised without any overt racial bias, and that people of my age and younger generally bought in to the Sesame Street message and don't harbor racism at their cores. I may be a little blind to inadvertent prejudices, and living in Idaho I'm comfortably removed from real situations of racial tension, so maybe it's a little easy for me to say. Yet I'm truly hoping that there will be more healing across racial lines in other areas of the nation. Unfortunately, the economic conditions that the majority of the nation have moved into do not bode well for this to happen, though.

3. The choice of a new generation. (Even though they all see in him whatever they want, and there are political fantasies shooting up like dandelions in April.)

5 comments:

The Fieldings said...

I am glad for Black America who must feel some kind of validation with this election. However, this is one of the times I hope the President-elect does not make good all of his campaign promises!

Renae said...

Here's a positive that you didn't list: The stupid election is finally over.

Umm not too much else good I can say for old Obama. Maybe next time we can get someone worth voting for, if we still have a democracy by 2012, that is. ;)

Machtyn said...

I agree with both commentators, hehe. In any case, there's a reason I don't want our president to be favored by the likes of Ahmedinijad, Castro, and Chavez.

Yay for black america, I just hope they don't think they are now entitled to everything. Even white americans are not entitled to everything. America is great because we have to work at it. The wealthy are wealthy because they worked at it. (Granted, some are born into it, but to keep it, they have to work.)

Noelle said...

Can you please tell me some more positives of President Obama? I'm having a hard time seeing it right now.

heroineworshipper said...

Enjoy not telling anyone about your blog.

> Positives of President-elect Obama

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