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Though many Obama supporters feel strongly about particular issues, and though polling shows the country moving left, the Obama movement undeniably revolves around the president-elect's individual stardom -- and specifically, the faith that he will make good decisions, whatever those decisions are
I don't really get why this is such a revelation and why so few know about it. It appears that there is a certain segment of those who voted Obama who now feel "betrayed". This is totally ridiculous. During the primaries I noted again and again how Obama wasn't the "liberal" his worshipful and more naive followers portrayed him as. He was at heart a centrist but who had found the magic of his innate charisma and novelty to work a "change" paradigm to get ahead.
In the end, I pointed out the Obama election dynmamic rested on a personality-charisma theme, and consolidated change around that theme. In other words, the "change" we believe in is really the change Obama believes in. But why must so many be caterwauling when it is highly likely - owing to the pressures of the time- that the change Obama enacts WILL be also the change we believe in.
Good grief, I mean the guy hasn't even been inaugurated yet, at least give him some breathing space.
It is also instructive here, for the benefit of the Nervous Nellies, to go back 48 years to JFK's presidency. It was surely true that he entered the presidency as a saber-rattling cold warrior (indeed one of the themes often addressed during the 1960 primary was the "missile gap")
However, two years after his inauguration that began to change and Kennedy evolved. Look at his 'Pax Americana" speech given at American University in DC for a clue. Look also at many of his other iniatives including signing the Nuclear Test Ban Trreaty with Nikita Khruschev in August, 1963 - a move that drove the Right bonkers.
Before that (Oct. 1962) look at his response to the Joint Chiefs who pressured him to invade and bomb Cuba. Then there was his signing of National Security Action Memorandum 263 which authorized the pullout of all U.S. personnel from VietNam by the end of calendar year 1965. Again, another move that didn't earn him any encomiums from the Right or its military leaders (e.g. Gen. John Singlaub, later to lead the ASC)
By the time of his assassination, JFK had even begun a process of rapprochement with Castro, albiet secretly through one of his aide de camps, Vallejo.
What all this shows is that the exigencies of the moment, and the presence of awareness and native intelligence CAN lead a new prez to make moves he otherwise wouldn't. I believe this is equally true of Obama - or Can BE!
