Who will inspire us all?
Posted : November 14, 2007 at 1:20 am [America/Los_Angeles]
Little that is certain can be said about the U.S. election a year from now, but one certainty is this: about 6.3 billion people will not be voting even if they will be affected by the outcome. That’s the approximate world population outside the United States. If nothing else, President Bush has reminded them that it’s hard to get out of the way of U.S. power. The wielding of it, as in Iraq, has whirlwind effects. The withholding of it, as on the environment, has a huge impact…the global community is ever more linked. American exceptionalism, as practiced by Bush, has created a longing for new American engagement. Renewal is about policy; it’s also about symbolism. Which brings us to Barack Hussein Obama, the Democratic candidate with a Kenyan father, a Kansan mother, an Indonesian stepfather, a childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia and impressionable experience of the Muslim world. If the globe can’t vote next November, it can find itself in Obama. Troubled by the violent chasm between the West and the Islamic world? Obama seems to bridge it. Disturbed by the gulf between rich and poor that globalization spurs? Obama, the African-American, gets it: the South Side of Chicago is the South Side of the world.
- Obama in Orbit
President Bush squandered a historic opportunity to put America on a radically different energy course after 9/11. But considering how few Democrats or Republicans are ready to tell the people the truth on this issue, maybe we have the president we deserve. I refuse to believe that, but I’m starting to doubt myself.
- Thomas Friedman, “Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda”
One final Clinton v. Obama point. Clinton really benefited from the audience responses; I’d love to know who got tickets for this debate, whether one campaign was allowed to get more tix than another. Because the booing by the Clinton supporters when Edwards or Obama confronted Clinton were distracting to the candidates and did throw them off every now and then.
- Quick Post-Debate Impressions (From NBC’s Chuck Todd)
I have not written much on the US Presidential Elections for 2008 so far. I am not sure if I will or not. Frankly, I am just a bruised citizen of this world who is so far disappointed at what he sees. It’s not that United States has a dearth of candidates running for the nation’s top job. It’s not that they aren’t smart or capable enough to do the job. The problem is, I was looking for someone who will “inspire” us all. Can Senator Clinton do that? No. Can Rudy Guiliani do that? No. And that is what’s so frustrating. I guess after almost eight years of feeling intellectually battered at the hands of the leadership of this country, I was not looking forward to electing a career politician. I was looking for someone who was in it for the right reasons - to serve the people of this great nation, and in turn, serve the 6.3 billion of the rest out there.
I like Barack Obama and Joe Biden. I would like to think that one of them can win this Election. But then again, I am reminded of what I said all along during the US Presidential Elections in 2004 on this Blog - “In the end, United States will elect a President that they deserve”. Sad, but true 
- Anand
Category: US Presidential Elections 2008