Election 2008

The election this year was one of the most highly anticipated since JFK for many reasons to many different people. From every perspective and in reality, this was a historic election as the first African American man was elected to the office of president of the united states. To my parents generation, this election had a first hand significance, as the culmination of civil rights efforts that they had witnessed. For my generation, Barack Obama has the same significance as JFK did in 1960. Both JFK and Obama excited, and got the "young people" involved in politics for the first time. They both were symbols of hope and a young, new America, which registered with the younger generations who look for something new, different than the norm in politics. A common opinion, post- election is that Obama has to meet peoples high expectations of him, and that he is yet to prove himself. I think that a majority of these peoples expectations have been met simply by him being who he is. On election night, when NBC was broadcasting images of tens of thousands of people crying (after it was announced that Obama had been elected) they were not crying because they were in love with his policies. For the most part he represents everything that Martin Luther King Jr. had worked for, everything that civil rights worked for, and that 40 years after MLK was assassinated America had elected an African American president.

In terms of physical results, I don't think that Obama will be able to change a whole lot about the economy in a matter of weeks or months. This is because our economy had been subjected over the past 8 years to crippling policies which will take time and hard work to correct. Although our foreign policy and image as a country has been damaged, this is not something which will be as difficult to fix. It has been primarily true that a nations leader is what determines how that nation is viewed. When FDR was president, he provided hope and a sense of a rising nation after a world war, and the great depression, and America was viewed as just that. While George Bush was president for the last 8 years, we were viewed as a nation of idiots, and self- righteous brute force. With nothing but Obama's election, came a new image for America and a new standing in the world as a country moving forward, away from racism and aggression. It is because of this new image that our world standing and the international opinion of the American people will change dramatically for the better. An example of this, is the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez's comments before this years election. Chavez who had previously called George Bush Jr. the devil in front of the United Nations, only a week ago said that he would be completely open to talks with Obama if he was elected.