So if you're like me, you might have had some trouble sleeping last night. Despite my best effort to avoid election returns, the fact that Barack Obama won yesterday's presidential election in an apparent landslide did not escape me.
Diametrically opposed as I am to Mr. Obama's politics, this is a bitter pill to swallow. We are now going to sort out, firsthand, the difference between the fact and fiction of the claims made during the campaign by the Republican side. One certainly hopes that most of it was hyperbole, but we shall see.
In the meantime, there are some things to consider as being the bright side.
First, the election was won fair and square. Unlike 2000, where the balance was tipped by hanging chads and a trip to the Supreme Court, there is no doubt that Obama won this election handily. Our Democrat friends have been vindicated, and their anger over the Bush administration's very existence should dissipate. On the other hand, the Republicans don't have reason to become upset over the results. Hopefully the next 3 years of non-campaign time will be less contentious on the point of the election's legitimacy.
Second, the Republicans did not show up with a candidate that expressed their true strength: conservatism. What we got instead was a lame turkey of a candidate who at best could only describe himself as a "maverick", which is to say he probably really didn't stand for much of anything at all besides political expediency. Frankly, John McCain was this decade's Bob Dole, and the election results bear that out. Such candidates are not worthy of office, no matter how good their running mates are. Hopefully, Mr. McCain will now fade into the background and won't consider another run for the top ticket in 2012.
Third, for better or worse, George Bush's presidency will soon come to an end. I am a Bush supporter based on his foreign policy approach and his reaction to 9/11. Domestically, he has been a marked disaster, eschewing conservative values for the tiny political gain that expanding the nation's entitlement spending problems bought him. With a Republican like George Bush in office, we might as well have had a Democrat for all the difference it made in domestic policy. The small bright spots, those being the tax reductions, will unfortunately expire shortly after his term. Other than those reductions however, the net effect of his presidency was likely more negative than positive. Moving on from that situation is something we can look forward to.
Will Obama be the most liberal President in history since FDR? Undoubtedly. Will he get a blank check from an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress? It seems likely. Will he destroy America and irrevocably change life as we know it? Unlikely. Some people think this is the beginning of the end of the United States' remarkable run as the world's superpower, and that our prosperity is in question. I would argue that the beginning really dates back to the Vietnam era, if not before. We have a major city, Detroit, standing in ruins today, as it has been since the late 1960s. Three quarters of a million people live in squalor in that city alone. Its major industry is undergoing an unprecedented implosion, and a large percentage of its housing either won't sell, or sells for less than the price of an eight-year-old used car. I find it difficult to believe that a President Obama could make things worse. Call that a backhanded sort of optimism if you will.
