It looks like Barack Hussein Obama is about to be swept into the most powerful office in the world. Intrade.com puts his odds of winning at 88% as of 2 November. A McCain win looks as unlikely as a snowstorm in Saigon. Obamamania is at hand.
Obama looks good, speaks well and clearly is intelligent. He talks about "change" a lot. He speaks beautifully about rising above partisan politics. But who is Obama, really? What change would he bring? How would he "rise above" the nastiness that characterizes politics in Washington? No one knows for sure.
To be honest, I'm a little apprehensive at the prospect of an Obama presidency. It seems to me that the *idea* of Obama is much more popular than the man himself.
In one word, the idea of Obama is "change." But change for what? It's like saying "anywhere but here." I, for one, am pretty interested in where, exactly, Obama plans to take us. But all I get is vagueness about change.
What I do know about Obama the man is that he voted with his party 95% of the time and that he has one of the most far-left voting records in the US Senate. When has he ever shown courage bucking his party? Never. And this is a man who will reach across party divisions and compromise? Seems unlikely.
Cloaked cleverly behind beautiful rhetoric is a man who is, in reality, far to the left of most Americans. He supports "spreading the wealth around" in the form of higher taxes and transfer payments. He's never actually run anything or created value in a business so I doubt he understands how business creates wealth in society, or how additional taxes and regulatory burdens harm the overall well-being of everybody.
[Indulge me in an interesting tangent here. Before I moved to Vietnam from Washington, I met a woman who was counsel to a Democratic US Senator, and attorney with zero business experience. We had a discussion about capital gains taxes. It became clear that she thought that raising the capital gains tax was "free money" that had zero negative effect on incentives of the people paying taxes. I.e. she believed that a man who renovates houses for a living and is taxed on the capital gain of each house he improves will not be less incented to renovate additional houses if his capital gains tax rate is higher. This was a woman who advises a powerful Senate member and didn't understand a thing about microeconomics and incentives! It scared the hell out of me. I suspect Obama has a similar blind spot.]
I also wonder about Obama's patriotic convictions. Does he believe America is the "Shining City upon a Hill" or a horrible opressor of all? For years and years he continued to go to a church whose preacher, Jeremiah Wright, screamed "God damn America" at sermons and believed that AIDS was invented by the US Government against African Americans. Not only that, but Wright married Obama and his wife and was a close friend and advisor to Obama. That Obama associated so closely with a man like that tells me he either has appalling judgment or he sympathizes with Reverend Wright's opinions. I find both troubling.
I was similarly appalled with Michelle Obama's comment about never being proud of America before her husband started winning elections. As the Vietnamese would say, Troi Oi! It offends my red-blooded American sensibilities. I want the woman who has the captive ear of the President to love America as I do. I don't think Michelle Obama does.
Despite all this, I'm willing to put my doubts aside and see what happens with a President Obama. If he's elected he'll have my support. He *is* a compelling figure and a moving orator -- those are very important qualities for a president. And he seems smart enough to listen to other opinions and moderate his position from time to time. So maybe his liberal leanings will be tempered by the fire of office and he'll become a pragmatic centrist like Bill Clinton.
I am concerned, however, that his supporters are putting crazy unreal expectations on him. Listen to them and it sounds like he's Jesus Christ or something -- he'll ride in on his unicorn and solve all of America's and the world's problems! Despite his talents, it will become clear by next summer that Obama is another -- perhaps quite talented -- politician. Not even he will be able to deliver on everyone's expectations of post-Bush nirvana. And then the lefties will turn and eat their own. I feel like Cassandra ;-).