It's Barack!!!

I never thought I would live to see the day when a black man could be elected President of the United States. Barack Obama is a symbol for all that is great about America. He has demonstrated that in America, all things are possible. He represents the pinnacle of the civil rights movement. African-Americans have served this nation well at all levels…and have risen to the top of American political life in the Armed Forces through Colin Powell, the Supreme Court through Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas, and in the Cabinet through Condoleezza Rice, just to mention a few. We, as a nation, are the better for it. Abraham, Martin, and John, along with Bobby, are walkin’ up over that hill today….smiling.

The entire country wishes President-elect Obama good luck. He is going to need it. The problems facing the nation, although not the worst I have seen in my lifetime, are formidable and fraught with considerable consequences if he gets it wrong. Energy, the economy, foreign policy, infrastructure, the environment, and competing civil rights, have come together in a confluence of events such as I have never seen before. The business channels are abuzz today trying to predict whether a President Obama is going to do what he said he was going to do, or be pragmatic and do what needs to be done.

Therein lays his biggest problem. He promised change without defining it in any meaningful way. It means different things to different people. He obviously can’t be all things to all people, so there will be disenchantment sooner rather than later after an abbreviated honeymoon period. If he moves to the left, rewarding his ultra-liberal base with a laundry list of social issues and welfare legislation, he will alienate the center white suburbanites whom he wrested from the Republican Party after the financial meltdown. Conversely, any move to the center will anger the uber left wingers who have been salivating since 1994.

Obama was able to win the election by successfully tying John McCain to a very unpopular president, George Bush. McCain, on the other hand, was unsuccessful in tying Obama to an even more unpopular Congress. As a Democratic president with the same, unpopular Democratic Congress, only more of it, Obama will be unable to distance himself from its political discourse in which an ultra left political philosophy is dominating the debate.

When gas prices go up again next year, and they will go up again, Obama will have to deal with a public that demands Drill Baby Drill, and a Congress that is worried about illusory global warming. He will be “cap and trading” (if you don’t know what that is, do your research) while you will be paying for $6.00 plus gasoline, if you are able to buy it at all, while your utility costs increase two to three times. Of course, the “needy” won’t have to pay for those things, you will be paying for theirs as well as yours. Ask Peggy the Moocher (click here).

ENERGY IS THE NUMBER ONE ISSUE FACING AMERICA. Our economy, our foreign policy, and our lives are tied to energy. Unless and until this nation addresses this issue head on, we risk the destruction of our nation. At the end of the day, it was energy that sank the Bush administration. And it will be energy that will sink the Obama administration unless he moves the Democratic Party to addressing the issues at hand immediately and expansively instead of chasing the windmills of global warming and the Kyoto Accords. The comments made by Obama as to bankrupting the coal industry, and Biden saying there will be no more coal fired electric plants in the United States, leads me to believe this issue has the potential to destroy whatever good Obama hopes to accomplish.

He will get a fast lesson in capital markets. There are many things that went wrong with our financial system. Taxes and wealth “redistribution” won’t solve them. I find it interesting that several of those being considered for Treasury Secretary are primarily former Goldman Sachs/Citigroup execs. Couple that with a Democratic Congress whose claim to fame was its failure to regulate Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae when told failure was coming…I guess the foxes will be running the hen house. That isn't change we can believe in.

The bad guys of the world aren’t going away. They only understand strength and power. Anything else is viewed as weakness. I suppose it won’t hurt to have a cup of tea with them, if you have a nuke in your back pocket.

Every generation has to go through its liberal period. I have lived through Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and the first two years of Bill Clinton (for all of the rhetoric about how good times were under Clinton, the country was in recession at the end of his presidency.) The electorate intimidated Lyndon Johnson into dropping out. It threw Jimmy Carter out. It neutered Clinton by throwing out the Democratic Congress. The electorate will now be watching Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry ("the war is lost") Reid. They should heed those moderate Democrats warning against “overreaching.”

Obama seems like a good guy. Now we will see his mettle. He will need a spine of steel to face this nation's formidable domestic and foreign policy problems. He will need something else made of steel to face the left wing of his party who got him elected. Let's give the guy a chance.