How Obama got elected

Many of us who follow politics are not suprised at what we are seeing from the Obama administration only 8 months in. If you listened to what he was saying before the election, you would not be shocked. In just about all he said, he showed that, if elected, he would be one of, if not the most, extreme liberal President ever elected.
But many didn't listen that intently. Many heard "we need Change." Or the "Audacity of Hope." And they felt good about changing direction after President George W. Bush, without considering what direction that might be. And, let's be honest, a lot of people felt great about electing a minority President for the first time ever. I think many white people felt good about voting for Obama because they could tell themselves and the world that they're not racist. Whether you like it or not, that race thing still hangs over people's heads. As you saw with the conflict between an arresting officer in Cambridge, Mass. and a Harvard professor, any conflict that happens to be between a white person and a black person is blamed on race. And unfortunately our President, instead of doing the whole country some good and saying something like "We need to stop looking at the race of people every time there's a conflict. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said that we should "judge a man not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character." And that goes both ways.
But instead, Obama said, with little information, that it was clear the "police acted stupidly." Many thought electing our first minority President would help bring the country together. I guess Obama has other plans.
But anyways, back to the topic at hand. Even many liberal democrats, especially Hillary Clinton supporters, will tell you that the media fell in love with Barack Obama during the primaries and up through the election. While it’s okay for the nation to fall in love with a particular candidate, it is downright irresponsible for the mainstream media to do so, failing to do it’s job of providing information to the people. And don't get me wrong, I'm not in support of the "Fairness Doctrine." I have no problem having a Fox News for the conservatives and an MSNBC for the liberals. But you have to go actively search out those channels on cable. I'm talking about the ABC, NBC, CBS, channels that are watched by the masses.

One of the big questions leading up to the 2008 election was the relative inexperience of Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama and Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Obama served only 36 months as Senator from Illinois, while Palin was only elected Governor of Alaska in November of 2006. While I’d much rather have an inexperienced Vice President than an inexperienced President with no executive experience, I thought the concerns were legitimate. And when I tuned in to ABC’s Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin, it was clear he thought he should ask the tough questions the people wanted to know. Excellent! Here’s the questions, taken right from the excerpts of the Gibson-Palin interview from Sept. 11, 2008:

• Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"
• And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"
• Didn't that take some hubris?
• But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?
• I know. I'm just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.
• Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
• Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
• I'm talking about somebody who's a head of state, who can negotiate for that country. Ever met one?
• You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

Wow. It almost seems as if he’s trying to embarrass her. Asking her if it was arrogant of her to accept the nomination, and asking her questions he knows the answers to but wants her to admit on television. Tough. But that’s okay. Because the people need to be educated on who they’re voting for. So these questions needed to be asked. The problem is less than a month later Gibson interviewed Obama and was not quite as tough. But don’t let me tell you. You be the judge. Here are Gibson’s questions to Obama, taken from the Gibson-Obama interview from Oct. 8, 2008:

• We've talked to a lot of people as we've traveled around the Midwest. One woman in Dayton said to me, if either one of these guys could tell me succinctly, simply, how they're going to get us out of this mess, that guy would win. It's still to be won. And she said neither has, and it seems as if neither can.
• Somebody else said to us where's the passion in these guys. Where's the anger? People that lost trillions of dollars in their stock accounts, in their pension plans, in their 401(k)s. You said out there at this rally fear and panic cannot pervade us.
• And yet fear does right now. And people look to leaders to turn that around or to counter that.
• You also said at this rally we need new direction, we need new leadership in Washington. What would you be doing right now that's any different than what the Bush Administration has done and is doing?
• That's puts you in a position -- that puts you in a position of essentially saying trust me. I'm a 47-year-old guy with one term in the Senate.
• You got to put your faith in me.
• Change the subject for a moment. John McCain has unloaded on you in the last 72, 96 hours as has Sarah Palin. McCain is saying, essentially, we don't know who Barack Obama is, where he came from. I'm an open book, he's not.
• Were you surprised, A, that he didn't bring it up last night at the debate and use that line of attack? And, B, since you must have prepared for it, what were you going to say?
• And, finally, she's come at you, Sarah Palin has come at you because of the Bill Ayers connection.

What happened to our hard-hitting reporter with all the tough questions? Wouldn't the people want to know if Obama was experienced enough? If he knew enough about international affairs? If it took some "hubris" to accept the Democratic nomination? If he had ever met a foreign head of state? Not only does he not ask them, Gibson even says McCain and Palin “unloaded” and “attacked” Obama, and gives him an opportunity to answer questions that he didn’t get to answer “last night at the debate.” Care to take a guess which way Charlie Gibson from ABC “News” leans?

I think it's very clear that Obama's executive inexperience is already showing. Look at health care. He tries to pass through a 1,000 page health care reform before congress goes home in August. He's getting extreme pressure from the American people at town hall meetings, so now his cabinet is floating out there that the "public" option may not be necessary. Now his own liberal Democrats are threatening to vote against him if the "public" option is not included. He is clearly not leading at this point.

Being a history teacher, I see my job similar to the media in many ways. I have an audience, my students. My job is to present the facts, on both sides, and encourage my students to use all of the information they have to make an informed decision. In early U.S. History I teach that Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson had two very different views of the role of government. But I don’t teach the one I like the most. I teach both, and ask the students to explain who they believe and why. When I teach the electoral college, I produce the positives and negatives and let the students decide. I present the facts and let my audience make an informed decision. This should be the role of the media, but clearly it’s not.
The problem is, many people get their information from television, and wrongfully assume that they are getting all of the information they need to make an informed decision. And of course, they’re not. I am not saying that if everyone educated themselves than they would be conservative. I know there are liberals out there that truly believe that there way is correct. What I am saying is that it is flat out misleading to let the media get away with this blatant favoritism, and I do believe that people should be given all the facts and be allowed to make an educated decision on their own. Not just the facts that make the liberal media feel right.