Yes he did it! What a collective sigh of relief, what a huge smile on the face of the earth and how very scary to be President Obama in today’s world…
I had fun with Sky Gilbar’s beautiful photos of Obama (above and below).
These are some of the pictures of Obama that I like best.
I teared up reading Nancy Gibbs’ article: “Some Princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope. Barack Obama never talks about how people see him: I’m not the one making history, he said every chance he got. You are. Yet as he looked out Tuesday night through the bulletproof glass, in a park named for a Civil War general, he had to see the truth on people’s faces. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, he liked to say, but people were waiting for him, waiting for someone to finish what a King began.”
Writers say it so much better than us mere mortals; take a look at Judith Warner’s piece here and Frank Rich’s here. Come on people, don’t be lazy! These are exciting times—good and bad—and history doesn’t forgive apathy…
I took this picture of my TV while watching the biography of my favorite American President, John Adams who said: “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
Obama’s election made me forget my agreement with Plato‘s view on Democracy…
Amartya Sen in Time Magazine..
“The most important thing that Barack Obama brings to the presidency is his willingness to reason. He won his presidency not as a black American but as a reasoning American who happens to be black. America needs a change from the reign of “obtruding false rules pranked in reason’s garb” — to use John Milton’s words. Attacking Iraq for an imagined link with 9/11 was daft. Having unaffordable health care is not a reasonable way to run a rich society. Destroying the environment is not smart. Spreading the wealth a bit in a deeply unequal society is not as offensive to reason as it appeared to Joe the noncertified Plumber.
The economic crisis has been caused by doctrinaire economic policies, and the solution calls for remedial actions that are reasoned — and seen to be reasoned, to generate confidence. In politics, the alienation of the world is not only because the U.S. has been so unilateral but also because the unilateral choices often have been so dumb.
Reasoning also demands re-examination. Obama has to reassess whether he has got the right balance in policies on trade. On Afghanistan, he must examine how to balance his military toughness with the building of social infrastructure there and finding ways and means of getting Pakistan’s energetic — and largely secular — civil society on his side, not against him. Obama may have to reassess some of his campaign rhetoric while firmly retaining his largehearted reasonableness.”
—By Amartya Sen
Nobel Prize–winning economist
On can make a case that Obama’s political father was Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago. Even though the two never met, Harold’s success in breaking the all-white barrier to blacks in Chicago politics was definitely a source of inspiration to Obama.
To understand where Obama is coming from and to learn more about Washington, I highly recommend this audio download from This American Life
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1214
Obama is very likely our best hope in these difficult times; but despite your renewed faith in Democracy, dear Michelle, I am with Plato on this one. In The Republic, he tells us that Democracies tend to become vile with the passage of time. The government of the people by the people, for the people assumes that the majority has a collective intelligence that transcends that of the individual – what a wild hypothesis! Call me a cynic but I don’t believe in the capacity of the masses to choose wisely (decisions that benefit the majority in the long run while using resources efficiently) and know that our system is easily manipulated by special interest and is prone to corruption. This inevitably proves Plato’s point.
So, let’s see what Obama does before we get too excited about who he is. After all, I hope we didn’t elect him because he is black; but because he is a good leader with a sound mind who happens to be black (or tan, as Berlusconi, called him!) 🙂
Pl refer Bryan Caplan’s book “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” which argues that voters are systematically biased against good economic policy. (Good economic policy in this case is generally defined as whatever ideas economists agree upon.)
Professor Caplan argues that it is therefore in politicians’ best interest to advocate bad economic policies. Inversely, any politician who pushes sound economic policies — or worse, is a trained economist — will have a tough time getting elected.
– From NYT Blog Economix