Posted on 11/07/2008 6:11:45 AM PST by John David Powell
The first comment I received from someone not on my television screen regarding the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the United States came via email early the day after the election. It asked simply, “Now what?” Those two words coalesced the questions facing not only our new president, but also the people of our nation, regardless of ideology or political affiliation.
Now we wait, I replied, and guard the house, and protect the chickens, and peer deep into the night and listen.
It occurred to me that my reply may sound skeptical, indeed fearful, of Mr. Obama. Quite the contrary. I meant to point out folks should react cautiously, but not anxiously. Those who did not vote for him have no need to grab their rifles, run out into their yards with hair aflame, and fire blindly at imagined intruders.
Those who voted for the current Mr. Bush the first time must remember their outrage when supporters of Al Gore derided the nation’s new leader before he could prove himself one way or the other.
Yes, there was much anger and even considerable suspicion regarding the election, bad feelings that remain to this day. But it’s different this time. The outcome is clear. No chads hanging the election in the balance. Back then, in 2000, Mr. Gore received half a million more votes than Mr. Bush. This week, Mr. Obama outpolled Mr. McCain by more than seven million votes. Even though he did not win, Mr. McCain received more votes than Messrs. Bush and Gore and even Ronald Reagan in either of his landslide elections.
Mr. Obama will become president of a nation divided strongly along many lines. Nearly 56 million of his fellow citizens preferred another candidate, another set of ideas, another plan for change. He will learn on the job, as did every other president before him, the best way to lead his nation in the direction he believes best. In the process, he will lose many of his followers, people who want to take their leader to places he does not, or cannot, go. He will find, as did every other president before him, that the Oval Office is a lonely and confining place.
That’s why we the people need to cut him some slack and resist the temptation to nitpick, to continue the mean-spiritedness that has infected our nation and has made a sport out of making sport of someone we don’t particularly like. The level of political intolerance and nasty rhetoric seems to have increased considerably during the last couple of years. Were the commentators and comedians to blame or did the campaigns set the tone that others mimicked? It doesn’t matter today. The election is over and both candidates, in their respective concession and acceptance speeches, achieved the level of eloquence we should see during a campaign, not just at the end.
Mr. McCain began his speech by asking the crowd to stop booing at the name of Barack Obama. And then he urged his supporters to join him in congratulating the next president and in offering Mr. Obama “our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromise to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited. Whatever our differences,” he continued, “we are fellow Americans.”
It is natural, he said, to feel disappointment. “But tomorrow, we must move beyond it and work together to get our country moving again.”
Mr. Obama echoed in his acceptance speech that call for national unity. He told the world that the citizens of our nation “have never been a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states. We are, and always will be, the United States of America.”
And then, on a night filled with history, he called forward the memory of Abraham Lincoln, a Republican from Illinois, who was the first to carry his party’s banner to the White House. “As Lincoln said to a nation more divided than ours,” he said, “we are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.”
That statement answers the second email I received the morning after the election, sent by a person who wrote, “He will never be MY president.” Our political system, the envy of the world, allows us to embrace fully the victor while guarding the house and peering deep into the night and listening. Then, if we find ourselves at odds with what comes to our front door, we can take up our ballot, not our rifle, and change our leadership again.
John David Powell is an award-winning Internet columnist and writer. His email address is johndavidpowell@yahoo.com.
Mr. Powell is naive enough to believe the “ballot” will be the type of free ballot of US tradition.At best, it will be a Hugo Chavez type ballot.More likely ,a Saddam Hussein type ballot.
I think there should be a huge market right now for bumper stickers depicting Calvin (of the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons) pissing on the name “Obama” much like the Calvin stickers depicting Calvin pissin on the Ford and/or Chevy Logo.
I would certainly get one and proudly display it on my bumper.
Slack is for taking up, you shithead, not for giving out.
I'm noticing there is nothing being said about the numerous states with voter fraud under investigation!
Think we'll ever hear the results & see anyone prosecuted or if everything will be overlooked & left in place so that Obama can win the next election!
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "President Obama: How Bad Will It Be?"
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
Hard to believe you’ve been here since 1999, but a review of your posts indicate that you were a blog pimp before blog pimping was cool.
I won’t cut him any slack, either. Nor will I cut his supporters any slack at all.
I will throw everything in their court and put the burden of all this idiocy on their shoulders every chance I get.
Yep and still no one in jail for the Fannie/Freddie colapse. Too many Dems with their hands in the pie.
On a cold day in hell I will cut him some slack. Screw him who will never be my president.
And Obama picks someone who was at Ground Zero in the financial collapse as his Chief of Staff? It is a very telling choice, and a very bad sign.
Congressman Billybob
Latest article, "President Obama: How Bad Will It Be?"
The Declaration, the Constitution, parts of the Federalist, and America's Owner's Manual, here.
“Another Obama Screwup!”
The heads of the Rat committees in charge of the fiasco were re-elected & are still in charge!
How ironic that they got rewarded for bankrupting our country. To boot - the voters gave us Obama & put the RATS in charge of everything to make sure we get more of the same!
His first act was to appoint a Fannie Mae Board member as chief of staff.
Actions speak louder than words.
.
Hussein will NEVER be my president.
This election was stolen by a Muslim/Marxist who had the power of millions of dollars worth of illegal campaign funds from our enemies abroad, ACORN voter fraud and the most powerful black radical racists, Muslim terrorists and America haters on the globe behind him.
He won’t bask in the glory of his victory in peace. We intend to go after him:
http://www.freedommarch.org/
.
I am not generally a mean-spirited person, but at a certain point you realize that you have to fight fire with fire and, the way I see it, this fight is for the future of our country.
In 2000, the election was divisive amongst party lines, but post-9/11, and now that we have a closet radical in office, the division is amongst different lines and a lot more serious - this isn’t just another Republican or Democrat loss, this is the first time I feel OUR COUNTRY has lossed and we need to make people see that.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a great thing that a black man broke such a monumental barrier so that he can serve as an inspiration to many others. I have nothing but respect for that. But, we need to let everyone see, all Americans, that Obama’s plans are not good for any one of us.
A lot of people listen to Hitler and Stalin. However, I am trying to find a bright spot to in this dim situation and I can take solace in the fact that no matter who the President was going to be they are going to look very bad in an economy that is going to bust. We just have to hope that American’s are not so dumb as to believe the media attempts to tell us Hussein is doing a wonderful job even though half of America is in soup lines. I for one will never be in such a line and I look forward to the day I can drive by one, stick my head out the window and chant “O BAM A, O BAM A” while laughing my ars off.
If Obama make the U.S. as safe as his own neighborhood we are all in trouble!
Judge mugged near Obama’s house Monday
November 7, 2008
BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter apallasch@suntimes.com
The night before Election Day, a Cook County judge was mugged just blocks from Barack Obama’s home in the Kenwood neighborhood.
Judge Eileen Brewer, a highly rated Harvard Law grad like Obama, lives a few streets away from the president-elect. The robbery happened Monday night, hours before voters would elect Obama president and retain Brewer as a judge.
“He really beat me up,” Brewer said of her attacker.
She had just dropped off her son’s tutor and was on her front porch when he struck. The man weighed over 200 pounds, and she had a tough time fighting him off, she said. “No broken bones, just Advil injuries. He punched me in the stomach, on the arms, my back. He dragged me across the porch,” she said.
After fighting unsuccessfully to hang onto her purse, Brewer chased the mugger down the block, shouting.
“This happens in Hyde Park,” she said.
Former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, who also lives in the neighborhood, was mugged on her block last year.
The neighborhood next to the University of Chicago is a pocket of affluence among higher-crime areas.
Brewer and Obama live just north of Hyde Park Boulevard, in the Kenwood neighborhood.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/24-7/1266202,CST-NWS-judge07.article#
They will soon enough. The lamestream media was able to sell him to enough fools with the thinnest resume any man has ever stepped into the White House with, but the day of reckoning is coming soon.
He cannot possibly be everything to everyone as he has promised. Somebody's not going to get their "pie" as fast as they want it, and the bickering will begin. I'm positioned to be able to exploit it over on the DUmmies board, we need to destroy them from within.
That's what they did to us, it just took eight years because we have principles. It should take less than eight months to do the same thing to them.
Give us a kiss...
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