Because my integrity material and my transpartisan politics material tends to appeal across the political spectrum, I am not at all surprised to have received some concerned e-mails today from people who remain worried about an Obama presidency, in addition to those who are delighted he was elected.
The two main fears have been expressed to me thus far include:
- Worrying that Obama is too left-leaning to heal the nation
- Worrying that allegations about Obama’s past choices of friends and associates could damage his judgment as president… or might have already damaged it
Here are my perspectives as well as my predictions regarding these concerns:
- In my opinion, most of Obama’s liberal supporters and his conservative detractors did not take sufficient time to analyze his perspectives deeply enough, despite there being FAR more reliable information available about him than most people seem to believe. Rather than delve deeply into this body of material, both liberals and conservatives instead chose too frequently to spin narratives about Obama to serve their own purposes.
- I predict that both the conservative and liberal narratives about Obama will prove to be surprisingly off base. I predict that people will soon find out that Obama is far more transpartisan than many of his liberal supporters have been counting on him to be, and that many of his conservative detractors have spun him to be.
- As to Obama’s friends and associates, I predict that many will be surprised by the number of grounded, seasoned, bipartisan and transpartisan people President-Elect Obama will select to fill government and advisory posts. This will debunk the spin about how much impact the controversial figures he has known have had on him (William Ayres and Reverend Wright for instance). I predict that, as President, Obama will demonstrate their influence on him was marginal at most.
This said, you can also be sure that I have my eyes closely trained on both Mr. Obama and his transition team. Obama has positioned himself as a President who will heal political polarization in the United States. I believe this is precisely what he intends to do. Because of this, if I find evidence that he is out of integrity with this intention, or that any of my above predictions are inaccurate, you will see some scathing posts about this on this IntegrityWatch Blog… not to mention an apology for having appraised him inaccurately!
If you want to explore this question further, here’s a link to an interview of Obama’s biographer, David Mendel, by an Australian journalist, Kerry O’Brien, of the Australian Broacasting Corporation, that might shed some further light. I found it the day after I wrote this post.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2008/s2412568.htm
