Obama for President

There has been a lot of excitement about Obama running for president. The press seem very happy with him. McCain seems to be having a difficult time. The Republicans seem to be too divided to agree on anything, so McCain appears to be the compromise candidate, and he isn't generating much excitement. So I had been thinking that Obama was going to win the election in November.

I read a couple things in the last day that made me realize I was falling into a mental trap.

One of these was a complaint about someone assuming that Obama was going to be the next President. Something along the lines of "the Democratic convention hasn't even happened yet".

The other was Margie Boule's column in the paper this morning. She mentioned more than half of the people in the United States thing Barack is a Muslim. He is a Christian, but that doesn't stop people from believing otherwise. The New Yorker cover probably didn't help. I can't imagine why they published it.

I have fallen into these traps before, thinking that the candidate I favored was a shoo-in for election. I mean it was perfectly obvious to anyone with half a brain that he was the better candidate. Then the election comes around and my candidate gets slammed, and I wake up dazed, wondering what happened.

So Obama may not be a shoo-in. There are a lot of vicious people in this country who thrive on character assassination and hatred, and with the economy not being so great, who knows where their anger will be directed. At the Republican kleptocracy who brought this down on our collectively stupid heads, or the upstart black man who is the devil incarnate?

I would like to see Obama elected just so he can make a clean sweep of the corruption in Washington. Of course he will replace it with his own brand of corruption, but it takes time for a good-ol-boy network to establish itself. So if Obama does in fact get elected we should expect to see a change for the better, at least until the next election.

I am afraid if McCain gets elected there will be too many sleaze balls that will carry on from the present administration. This is politics and he is a Republican. I would like to think he could do great things, but I think he may just get swept along on the tide, unable to slow our headlong plunge into recession, depression and despair.