A Quick Thought On The Election

Kid has hand-foot-mouth disease (not a serious illness, but pretty annoying to a 15-month-old), so my longer analysis is going to have to wait a day or two.  I'll have plenty to say, but for the moment, believe it or not, Republicans appear to have dodged a bullet.  More later

For now, congratulations to President-elect Obama.  While I probably agree with about 3% of what you're going to try to do (more on that later), we'll have plenty of time for discussing that over the next four years.  For now, all Americans should enjoy the historic nature of this moment.  It should be a major step forward in race relations (whether the powerful entrenched interests who have a major stake in racial grievance mongering allow that to happen is another thing altogether).  From the time we're young, every child is taught that in America, anyone can grow up to be President.  Not all believe it.  But we've had plenty of proof over the past years that the Presidency is not limited to people born with silver spoons in their mouth, and now we have proof that it is not limited to people with a caucasian phenotype.  In that sense, it is a good day for all of America, and that is change even I can believe in.

Whether it is a good day overall for America in the long run depends on which Barack Obama shows up for the inauguration.  We saw two Obama's over the course of this campaign.  We were introduced to primary candidate Obama in the first half of the year.  This Barack Obama won on promises of hundreds of billions in new spending, a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, unconditional meetings with dictators, revision and/or abandonment of free trade agreements, swift passage of the Freedom of Choice Act, and a repudiation of the Reagan/Clinton/Bush approach to governing the economy.

Then there is the Obama who won the general election.  Based on what I saw through his advertisements in Virginia, this candidate won on promises to protect the right to keep and bear arms, a massive middle class tax cut, a health care plan somewhere in  the middle of a free-market appraoch and government-run health care, a net spending cut and continuous acknowledgement that government doesn't have all the answers to our problems.  This Barack Obama essentially ran as Bill Clinton's third term.

I firmly believe from past associations, voting records, and the various unscripted comments made over the course of the campaign that "primary candidate Obama" is the "real" Obama.  If that President Obama shows up, the economy, already sapped by the financial crisis and the cyclical close of a lengthy expansion, will not improve, the country will remain divided, and his party will have a rough election in 2010.  For all the talk of the desire for a new approach, exit polling shows the country to be barely more liberal than it has been since 1972.  If "Presidential candidate" Obama shows up to govern in spite of his instincts (much as Bill Clinton did for his second term), there could be a solidified political re-alignment in American politics.  We'll see what happens, but I hope for the good of the country that "Presidential candidate" Obama is who shows up. 

I guess I should also note that there has been "running from behind/coming under fire" Obama.  This is the Obama of "lipstick on a pig/old dead fish/you're likeable enough."  We only saw glimpses of this Obama, because there were so few moments where he didn't look to be on a course of winning his campaign.  But with Democrats firmly in control of the executive and legislative branches, at some point in the next year, Obama is going to be in bad political shape.  If "coming under fire" Obama looks anything like it did during the campaign, it will get very ugly.

In the meantime, I went over to Obama's tax calculator and was pleased to see that I am entitled to a $1,500 tax reduction.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.