@H2O MAN,
We share your concerns, but for the sake of the nation we must hope that the new administration will rise successful to the many challenges of our times.
Obama isn't the first person to sit in the Office with little or no preparation for it. Truman was pretty much a failure at everything and was little more than a foot soldier in the Pendergast Machine before becoming an ignored VP. Chest Arthur knew only the corruption of collecting customs in New York before becoming President, yet he put Civil Service in place and ruthlessly rooted out corruption. Andrew Johnson was a functional illiterate pushed onto the national stage by an ambitious wife. Challenged by his times, he kept Lincoln's more moderate treatment of the defeated states as his guiding star.
We need to separate the wild rhetoric of the campaign trail from the more complex realities of the candidates themselves. The Left hated Bush from the beginning, and they never let up with their hate mongering, distortions, and efforts to undermine his authority and ability to govern. Instead of trying to help the President achieve his goals, they undercut him at every opportunity. For many on the Left, finding any excuse to smear smear the President became more important than making a realistic assessment of the administration. It was important to them and their view of the world that the President fail, and the more and bigger the failure the better. It never seemed to occur to them that those smears contributed to failure, and that the consequence of failed policies harmed the nation.
How can we now not give our full support to the new President and hope that his stated goals will be met successfully? We may have serious doubts that he can 'fix' the financial crisis without undercutting free enterprise and setting off an inflationary spiral that might even make things worse, but I sure hope we're wrong about that. His policies may play into the hands of our country's sworn enemies, but we should certainly hope that we are mistaken.
We conservatives should support the man, his goals and his administration. If things go wrong, as many of us fear they might, then will be the time to come up with alternatives. In the meantime, we should act as a "safety" against specific policies and initiatives within the government. I sincerely hope that the time will not come when conservatives begin acting like Leftists mouthing shrill invective and stirring up public resistance to the government. We have conservative representatives in Congress to represent our views, let them do the work we elected them to do. If, as we fear, the policies of this administration are fatally flawed the results will soon enough be evident to all. Give the lad a fair chance to show us we are wrong.
