Communist fellow travellers sing red propaganda song at Obama inauguration party shock!
My first political memory is of hearing Carter lose the election to Reagan on the radio when I was six. Since then the US has never really had a president you can be proud of. Reagan was a shambling corpse held together by cuecards and tons of makeup, Bush 41 was a charmless CIA bureaucrat who barfed up his dinner in the lap of the Japanese prime minister, Bill Clinton had his charms but no substance, a bit of a clown and finally Bush 43 was a smirking fratboy asshole and a (not so) dry drunk to boot. But Obama just looks good, like a regular human being, not warped by too many years in Washington yet. Bush was hyped as a regular guy you’d like to have a beer with, but Obama actually fits that description and what’s more, you could see him as an actual leader, not just in the White House, but equally well
in a local neighbourhood activist group or something like that. In all the coverage of the election campaign and after, I’ve never seen him look uncomfortable or anything other than himself. He just looks like a proper president.
And yes, appearances aren’t everything, and yes, as a socialist or any sort of leftist he’s sure to disappoint us, he’s not going to get the revolution started, he’s not going to change the system. But dammit, it’s been so long since there actually has been any president who is even capable of disappointing us.