An open letter to President-elect Obama

Well said.


However, I would like one dissenting opinion to acknowledge the honorable way with which Obama won, which I think itself is deserving of some respect. No dirty tricks. No smears. No ploys to hatred or fear. No divisive rhetoric. Just a clean, consistent message and a lot of hard work.

 

The thing i like the most about Obama is that he seems like he's got friends on both sides, and while his views are liberal he can be swayed to a more conservative stance. I like how clean he ran, and above all, what's the worst he can really do? People forget that the president can't overhaul the country in one night, it makes me question how many people actually took introductory civics. Whatever, the beauty of our country, of our system is that nothing is set in stone. Mr. Obama, I am happy for you, and I think you are completely capable of doing some good things, but my cynicism makes me feel like you'll end up posting more of the same.

 

High-five!

 

Which poster is Obama? I think he is disguised as Hayes_Street, very serious and pragmatic.

 

?? Did you forget about the voter intimidation during the primary caucuses?

 

You won't win an argument on whether Obama is a clean campaigner.

More guilt by association stuff.

Yawn.

 

Very nice OP, Refman. Believe me, us Democrats are hoping he makes a go of this as well!

 

Nice post, Refman.

I think Obama is aware that he inherits a deeply divided nation. I think actually that that was one of the main premises and arguments for his candidacy - that he might be a man who cared enough about resolving that situation to actually take steps to do so. It was one of the main reasons I supported him and one of the main reason you might have noticed I've been less combative here of late. His speech in 04 about how we are not blue states or red states but the United States really spoke to me. It spoke to a thing I wished was true and wanted to be true even if I couldn't yet give up my own arms to help make it so.

If Obama is to have a chance at uniting this country, as I honestly believe he wants to do, it will take people like you, who didn't vote for him, giving him a chance to do that.

So I appreciate your good post. And I too pray that he will be successful in those efforts.

The times demand it.

 

Nice post, Refman. I am in the same boat as you. I voted McCain and I still dont buy what Obama is selling. But I hope to be proven wrong and he has my support as an american.

 

I voted for Obama but I didn't buy the fairy tale.

Doesn't anyone find the relentless attempts to identify McCain with Bush nothing more than a "dirty trick" and a cultivation of "hatred or fear?"

While it is alarmingly simple, the "CHANGE" mantra is divisive rhetoric.

It's all still politics.

 

Here's a quote from a Charles Krauthammer column. Not only did he get your letter, but he's raised Obama to new heights. Considering how hard he worked for McCain's election, this is pretty astonishing!




November 07, 2008
The Campaign Autopsy
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- In my previous life, I witnessed far more difficult postmortems. This one is easy. The patient was fatally stricken on Sept. 15 -- caught in the rubble when the roof fell in (at Lehman Brothers, according to the police report) -- although he did linger until his final, rather quiet demise on Nov. 4.

In the excitement and decisiveness of Barack Obama's victory, we forget that in the first weeks of September, John McCain was actually ahead. Then Lehman collapsed, and the financial system went off a cliff.

This was not just a meltdown but a panic. For an agonizing few days, there was a collapse of faith in the entire financial system -- a run on banks, panicky money-market withdrawals, flights to safety, the impulse to hide one's savings under a mattress.

This did not just have the obvious effect of turning people against the incumbent party, however great or tenuous its responsibility for the crisis. It had the more profound effect of making people seek shelter in government.

After all, if even Goldman Sachs was getting government protection, why not you? And offering the comfort and safety of government is the Democratic Party's vocation. With a Republican White House having partially nationalized the banks and just about everything else, McCain's final anti-Obama maneuver -- Joe the Plumber spread-the-wealth charges of socialism -- became almost comical.

We don't yet appreciate how unprecedented were the events of September and October. We have never had a full-fledged financial panic in the middle of a presidential campaign. Consider. If the S&P were to close at the end of the year where it did on Election Day, it will have suffered this year its steepest drop since 1937. That is 71 years.

At the same time, the economy had suffered nine consecutive months of job losses. Considering the carnage to both capital and labor (which covers just about everybody), even a Ronald Reagan could not have survived. The fact that John McCain got 46 percent of the electorate when 75 percent said the country was going in the wrong direction is quite remarkable.

This is not to say that McCain made no errors. His suspension of the campaign during the economic meltdown was a long shot that not only failed, it created the McCain-the-erratic meme that deeply undermined his huge advantage over Obama in perception of leadership.

The choice of Sarah Palin was also a mistake. I'm talking here about its political effects, not the sideshow psychodrama of feminist rage and elite loathing that had little to do with politics and everything to do with cultural prejudices, resentments and affectations.

Palin was a mistake ("near suicidal," I wrote on the day of her selection) because she completely undercut McCain's principal case against Obama: his inexperience and unreadiness to lead. And her nomination not only intellectually undermined the readiness argument. It changed the election dynamic by shifting attention, for days on end, to Palin's preparedness, fitness and experience -- and away from Obama's.

McCain thought he could steal from Obama the "change" issue by running a Two Mavericks campaign. A fool's errand from the very beginning. It defied logic for the incumbent party candidate to try to take "change" away from the opposition. Election Day exit polls bore that out with a vengeance. Voters for whom change was the most important issue went 89-to-9 for Obama.

Which is not to say that Obama did not run a brilliant general election campaign. He did. In its tactically perfect minimalism, it was as well conceived and well executed as the electrifying, highflying, magic carpet ride of his primary victory. By the time of his Denver convention, Obama understood that he had to dispense with the magic and make himself kitchen-table real, accessible and, above all, reassuring. He did that. And when the economic tsunami hit, he understood that all he had to do was get out of the way. He did that too.

With him we get a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin. (I say this admiringly.) With these qualities, Obama will now bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.

But before our old soldier fades away, it is worth acknowledging that McCain ran a valiant race against impossible odds. He will be -- he should be -- remembered as the most worthy presidential nominee ever to be denied the prize.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/11/the_mccain_postmortem.html


Not bad, and some interesting takes on the campaigns. I don't agree with his last sentence, but only because I think there are others ahead of McCain in that regard, not that he didn't earn the praise.

 

do it!

 

There was no fairy tale. The idea that there was one was the fairy tale.

As was the idea that comparing a presidential candidate to a sitting president he had supported 90%+ of the time was a dirty trick. It was a fact. McCain was asked over and over how he differed from Bush on the economy. He didn't have an answer. On the economy, they'd been together 100% since McCain first opposed the tax cuts whose repeal he decided, at the end of the campaign, to regard as socialist.

Further, "Change" was neither a mantra nor rhetoric. And that is evidenced by how differently Obama practiced politics in this campaign than anyone in my lifetime (I'll be 40 in March).

He utterly refused small minded, cynical attacks, both in the primary and the general. All while he was getting hammered in both by the same.

Because the major premise of his campaign, the main thing he was banking on, was that even if people didn't agree with his policy proposals, they would be hungry to unite. That they were weary, like Ref seemed in the OP,
of the division that has so stunted our ability to address the major challenges of our day.

You all know me here and you all know I'm a hardnosed fighter. I love a good fight. But I also know that the prize for winning a hard fight is a 50.1% prize.

Obama didn't want to win that way and that really stole my heart.

So he won a little under 53% (significantly larger, in the scheme of things, than 50.1 or 49 or whatever our modern presidents since GHWB have gotten), but he's honestly not through asking for your support or your vote.

That was the whole premise of his campaign. That was the whole premise of the "change."

Same old politics? I think it's exactly the opposite of that. But I'm happy to let history judge.

While we wait for the results to come in, I do sincerely appreciate your vote giddyup. And I hope he won't let you down.

 

And that's what got my vote. I don't fear Obama but I don't necessarily trust him either. He's a long way from being a known commodity, but I'm not interested in the crude attempts to undercut his marvelous accomplishment.
Maybe what you love about him is his relative inexperience?

I think McCain would be a pretty good uniter, too, but the symbolism of having a Democratic president was irresistible to me. Everyone keeps it between the ditches anyway....

 

Pointing out someone's record is not a "dirty trick". Fear? Hatred? Are you serious?....

No, calling someone "socialist" and saying they "pal around with terrorists" is divisive rhetoric.

Calling for change is platform/idea.




Seriously giddy, if you believe even an ounce of what you just said here, I am worried about you.

 

Can someone cite the congressional record for "going along" with President Bush? Someone told me it was almost 90%... is that true? or even close to true? Where does Obama's record stand on this?

I'm not denying any of the name-calling. In fact, I've distanced myself from that and I wish you would recognize and appreciate that. Callling for "CHANGE" is way too broad to be anything but a battle-cry.

I'm comfortable.

 

Too comfortable.