The Obama Bubble (aka president-elect bubble)

So I have a new president. Well, technically, I have 70+ additional days of the current president, George W. Bush, and then arrives president-elect Barack H. Obama. I call him my president because that is what I said I would do if he got elected. I am proud to be an American and I believe in supporting one’s president to the best of one’s ability. As a matter of fact, while I was continually upset at the shenanigans (political, personal, financial, legal and otherwise) of Bill Clinton, I still prayed for the guy and tried my best to get behind him on stuff that mattered to the country. To be fair, I was outraged a number of times too, but I wasn't about to move to Canada. I think in this election there is plenty of “stuff” that matters to the country and I want to support our governance in seeing positive things happen in this country.

I am a little worried about the “Obama Bubble” as I will call it. Nearly every president-elect has somewhat of a bubble to deal with as the result of election promises and no matter who becomes president they will likely have to deal with that bubble. The issue is never IF the bubble will burst but WHEN it does, how the country will handle it. In the case of Obama, it is no different.

But more specifically, I think the Obama president-elect bubble is larger than normal. Here is just one video that explains what I am talking about.

In my short life I don’t really recall people getting caught up into such extreme expectations. From Iraq, to the economy, to gas prices, to healthcare, there was a lot on the table and on that table as well were promises of delivering on some of the bigger issues in a time sensitive manner coupled with chastising remarks to McCain about his plans taking too long (in the case of fuel prices, Obama regularly gave him a hard time in that drilling would take 10 years to develop. Iraq is another example.) Now that Obama is president-elect, his first speech worked to lower the expectation a little by insisting, "We may not get there in one year or even one term."

The worst thing Congress could do now (along with president-elect Obama) would be to artificially pump up that bubble by simply writing more "stimulus checks" but mark my words, it will happen. The problem is that such activity almost never makes a big difference, but instead increases the national debt, pumps up the buble, only making for a longer fall when the real economy attempts to reset itself.

Riding on top of Obama's “inspiring” speeches over the last two years, for some, has felt like a huge breath of fresh air in the middle of a world of turmoil. I have no doubt that this voice of “hope” was just the voice some were looking for. I fall into the camp of people who listen to those speeches and then look for a record of parallel behavior to match those plans and words, which typically lowers the effect of "inspiration" for me (because all politicians are typically a bit of a bubble in themselves.) I however worried that the when the Obama Bubble bursts for people like Peggy Joseph, along with many others, they will have a long fall to endure back down to the reality of politics and the speed by which economies, industries and government moves. To those of you with more realistic expectations, you realize that leaving Iraq was more or less an argument over semantics: McCain said we would leave when we could and he wasn't going to set an arbitrary date, while Obama said we would leave in around 16 months but he reserved the right to change that if on the ground leadership gave him better advice (rendering the 16 months number rhetoric.) Honestly, I wouldn't be in favor of leaving before it is in the best interest of our nation, first in a security sense and then in a financial sense.

For me, I continue to think that Obama’s economics and life-oriented ethics are completely questionable and my hope is that any worse-case speculations that seem to me to be reasonable will be proven wrong. As with any president, Democrat or Republican, I will continue to observe and be happy for our successes as a nation and upset at our failures. Some of those will be directly correlated to the president, some to the various environments that surround us, some to Congress and others to the American people.

Years ago I sat in a run down little hotel room in Moscow having endured one of the most exciting and scary weeks of my life. Having completed most of what I was there to do, I found myself exhaling, letting go of my breath, and uncurling my toes inside my shoes. The thought came over me, “Steve, you have traveled, brought help, faced down border guards, stood across from government officials yelling at you will solders holding their guns near bye. You can relax now. You are almost home.” Oh, but how not true that was. I had about a week left of ground travel to get from Moscow to Helsinki, Finland and we had to get a Russian girl to Sweden but she had no papers to get across the Finland border. I wasn’t almost home, I was barely half way home! The same is true for all of us. The inevitability of a new president is upon us and he as a representative like the rest of Congress, representing one third of the checks and balances of our Federal branches are still just public servants in a government by and for the people. We don’t work for their goals, they work for ours and should be taking their marching orders from us.

If you care about your country, stay engaged, do not hand the responsibility of this government over to these public servants to do what they think is best, but rather stay in their ears telling them to serve this country and it's government. Remember, it is representation, not subjugation.