This is the first time in my life that the guy I was rooting for became president. I liked Barack Obama from the get-go. I was rooting for him before Iowa, when there was an 8-person slate of Dem. candidates. Not particularly optimistically, but he was the guy I’d have picked, and somehow everyone else agreed with me. And as I’m sitting here on the eve of the inauguration, I wanted just to explain why I like Obama. What I told people was that he was the guy most like me that was running, but of course that’s just silly. There’s also the idea, attributable to someone or other, that a random person plucked from the populace would make a better president than any random person who was elected, and Obama seemed the closest to that “random person” then any other politician in striking distance. But this too misses the real essence.
What it comes down to is that Obama seems like the guy, when all is on the table, that is really best for the job. Clinton got the job through sheer political craftsmanship. Regan got it because people liked him, brains be damned. The Bushes got it through the unrelenting power of political connections. But Obama got the job just by straight-up being the best damned guy for the job. (The annoying smart guy, as Jay so lovingly put it.)
I’ve got no illusions — in 8 years you people will elect another idiot. We’ll continue to have mostly less-then-ideal presidents. Hopefully after 8 years of GWB we’ll no longer believe, as I used to, that who’s president isn’t really of that much consequence.
So do this with me. Let’s revel, just one last time, in the sheer breadth and scope of the badness of the George W. Bush presidency. Let’s pick a topic at random. International relations, science, civil liberties, bleh bleh bleh… let’s go with Bush’s relationship with the press:
OK, we’ve got that out of our system. Now, let’s welcome our new president. If all goes according to plan, you can watch the inauguration right in this little window, courtesy of Hulu. See you on the other side!
Update: Jay on inauguration day, just as I was raggin’ on him.
Update: Bleh, Hulu’s on autoplay, and it’s got crappy FOX news. Try MSNBC, or see Jason’s guide.
Update: Viva Obama.
Update: Text of the speech.
I gotta say, I also thought Obama was the right choice from the start, but in my case, everyone (immediately) around me seemed not to agree, about everything. Whether it was him winning the primaries or clobbering McCain in the elections… The guy exudes this cool-headedness that is practically contagious and despite the gut feeling (could you call it a gut feeling when it’s that obvious?) I took a more cynical stance in my support. I keep thinking that he is still a politician and not quite the second coming when it’s all said and done.
But when someone wins the presidency quite as masterfully as he did, you can’t help but feel that we are in good hands.
Great links. (didn’t know you were an Jay Smooth fan. I needs to add illdoctrine to my blogroll.)
I would be more of a Jay Smooth fan if half of his videos weren’t him promising to make more videos more often, followed by a month of silence. Still, when he’s on, he’s HOT.
One of the things early on that made me like Obama was his talk at Google, which I saw on Google Video. Oddly, it seems to have been pulled offline this video, of a later appearance, alludes to the earlier talk (which was much more casual and revealing), so it’s odd that they’ve apparently taken it down.
“FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH.”
Doesn’t that warm the cockles of your heart?
i was happy about his democratic candidacy and his presidential candidacy but my mind always tells me to be wary of he who holds the power.
wariness aside, i see a lot of promise in america’s new willingness to be transformational instead of stagnant.
and please, yes, suck it up and vote more annoying smart guys!