What Lies Ahead?

Well, it happened. Not really any big surprise though, with the way things were going. While there are a few races still undecided, the voters seem to have done exactly what most analysts and pollsters predicted. I have to admit, even with all my misgivings about the man, his background and his questionable associations; the fact that he was elected, disagreeable as it may be, is understandable.

The Obama machine really did its job. They ran an excellent campaign to make the most advantage of his outstanding public speaking ability. The mainstream media did their part by glossing over his past, his inexperience and his lack of true qualifications to sell him to the American public, which is exactly what they did. Indeed, together they elevated him to an almost “rock star” like popularity.

It was easy for them when you think about it. There was never any question that he would have the black vote. It was obvious from the beginning that 99% of blacks would vote for him no matter what he said or did so he didn’t have to expend any resources to get those votes. All he really had to do was court the independents and capitalize on the anti-Bush sentiment that grew to its peak after the economy went south. That played right into their hands and for most of the latter stages of the campaign, that was their main message; ‘everything bad was Bush’s fault and McCain was just more Bush’, and it worked like a charm. Next January, he’ll be the man in charge.

The question now is, how will he face the problems ahead for this country and how will he govern? Will he do what he has been saying and govern more from the center as a moderate Democrat or will he try to take the country hard left more like his short voting record in the Senate would suggest? This alone will determine if we make a slow recovery and rebuild our nation and our economy or we plunge further into the downward spiral.

So far, even though there has been a clamoring for action from the radical left wing and a few blowhards in congress spouting off, there isn’t any real showing of what the president elect really intends. We’ll just have to wait and see.

I tend to think that he isn’t going to do anything radical at first. He is going to start out with a more moderate tendency because to do anything else would be 180 out with what he has been promising. His true far left policies won’t show themselves until later in his presidency, but I do think it will happen. It’s simply a matter of time.

The best thing he could do now though, to help the economy, is postpone any plans for any tax increases. If he publicly announced that he is backing off of any tax increases, especially the capital gains tax, for at least the next year or so, you would see the economy start to come back. Wall Street would settle down, the wild swings would level out and the slow climb would begin. It will take time to bring things back. The government will have to do everything it can to help business and minimize large corporation failure that would have a huge impact on the economy and buy time for the recovery to progress, but it will happen if our government takes the right approach.

There is a lot of speculation at this point but one thing is for sure, there are huge expectations of what the Obama presidency is going to do. All eyes will be upon him.

I wonder if he feels the pressure yet.