Barack Obama will be the next president. Hillary got caught with her pantsuit down, by the junior senator from Illinois. Obama said upon his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, he would not run for president in 2008. He lied, and Hillary's poorly-run campaign took for granted the young upstart, who she in fact helped bring to the U.S. Senate.
Obama has been on the fast track to the presidency since he graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science, in 1983. After Columbia and one year working in finance, he took a low-paying job in Chicago's south side to establish credentials and a base in the black community, because he had never had one before. He was raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, attending private schools. He brags about how his mother collected food stamps. What he leaves out, is that she did this while she worked on her doctoral degree in anthropology. She was hardly your typical welfare case. Using a weak food stamp story to curry favor with poor people is a new low in presidential politics. Trust me because I know from personal experience, mom using food stamps is not something to brag about.
Obama put down roots in the south side of Chicago with the help of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Barack was a community organizer. Obama is quoted in the April 3, 2007 issue of The Nation as having said, "I can't say we didn't make mistakes, that I knew what I was doing. Sometimes I called a meeting, and nobody showed up. Sometimes preachers said, 'Why should I listen to you?' Sometimes we tried to hold politicians accountable, and they didn't show up. I couldn't tell whether I got more out of it than this neighborhood." Will Obama's presidency be a trial and error learning process just like his community organizing was? Will he get more out of his presidency than America?
Obama worked as a community organizer for three years, before moving on to Harvard Law School. Obama became the first half-African president of the Harvard Law Review. He didn't win his position by being a leader; he won it by having a weak personality that didn't clash with the younger members of his class. He was the old guy in his group so he knew how to handle the young idealists. Being head of the review launched him to international acclaim. He was offered a book deal, which became "Dreams from my father."
Obama returned to Chicago, where he worked for the law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland. This is where he met Chicago slumlord Tony Rezko, a Syrian-American businessman facing federal charges of extortion. Rezko raised money to help elect Obama to the Illinois state senate in 1996. Despite his shady dealings with Rezko, Obama will be the next president.
Obama will win the presidency, despite the fact that in the Illinois state senate, he voted present more than 100 times, instead of yes or no on an issue. This was party of a political strategy he used to avoid votes that could be held against him. Barack served in the Illinois state senate for eight years.
In his two years in the U.S. Senate, according to the Washington Post Senate vote tracking database, Barack Obama has missed 41% of his votes and when he did bother to show up he voted with his party 96% of the time. He has a terrible attendance record and he hardly has the track record of a uniter.
He will be the least experienced president we have ever had, and he will win because of one word; change. 2008 is a year for change, and with his "black" heritage and message of change and unity, he is in the right place at the right time, with the media giving him a free ride. The media has not challenged his image, they have accepted him for who he says he is. That type of press coverage is priceless. Obama's image has been amplified and sold to the American people by David Axelrod, founder of one of America's premiere marketing firms, Axelrod, Kupper, Plouffe and Del Cecato. Axelrod is to Obama what Karl Rove was to George W. Bush; the architect of his campaign.
He's going to have to adapt quickly to being president; there isn't a "present" voting option when it comes to political issues like the Global War on Terror, energy independence and foreign relations. When he's president he's going to have to be there 100% of the time, unlike his job in the Senate. If any normal person missed work that much, we'd be fired. Instead, he'll be made president. Hopefully, for America's sake, Obama is more successful at running the White House than he was at community organizing, he will make better cabinet choices than the likes of Tony Rezko and he will be a strong accountable leader as the voice of our nation instead of just one of many guiltless voters on the floor of the legislature.