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Health & Fitness

Why Did We Elect Obama? Have We Learned Our Lesson?

Thoughts on how and why we elected Obama in the first place. We did it for the right reasons. It just didn't turn out to be in America's best interest

The question keeps getting raised: Considering how inept, how seemingly unprepared to lead all of America, not just his political clones, and how much his ideas and policies are so bad for America, how and why did we elect Obama as our President?

I have given this great thought.

To put it most simply: Black Pride.

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Many in this country, no matter what our skin tone, family heritage or background, felt rightfully proud that a man of color could rise so high as to be nominated by a major party to be President of the United States.

Despite Obama's non-record and his personal lack of pride for America's values, America’s exceptionalism, enough Americans did feel a soaring pride in our nation for giving such a chance to a person of color.

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Many Americans felt a similar pride when Michael Dukakis, a child of Greek immigrants, rose so high as to also be nominated to run on the Presidential ticket. On the night when he accepted the nomination of the Democrat party, there were plenty of tears of pride in our household as my wife, the grandchild of Greek immigrants, went through a box of Kleenex, at least I think, with so much pride in her heritage and America.

However, in that case, Dukakis, a former failed Governor, did have a record to expose and he was crushed in the general election.

Obama was a mystery to so many who didn't take the time to dig into his past affiliations with race-hating religious leaders and domestic terrorists for friends and neighbors. So many Americans thought it was neat to get a chance to vote, for the first time, for a Black man for the highest political office in the land.

Many conservatives, on the other hand, who really didn’t believe McCain would be much if any of an improvement of Bush, figured Obama would be such a disaster that, like conservatives would be able to take over both house of Congress two years later, in the 2010 election.

That’s what happened a little more than a decade before when Clinton failed so badly in his first two years as President, Republicans did take over both houses of Congress two years later, and because Congress controls the purse strings in American politics, the smarter, conservative Republicans had the best ideas and Clinton went along with just about everything Gingrich and his fellow Republicans wanted.

The result was a fiscal success, and because the President gets too much blame when things go wrong and two much credit when things go right, Clinton accepted the credit, was re-elected and left office after eight years as still a popular President.

This time, with the Obama disaster of his first two White House years, the Tea Party conservatives managed to take over the House, but the mountain of taking over the Senate was too high to climb.

The failure was there; even greater than we faced under Clinton, but the mountain of taking over both the House and Senate was too much.

That will have to wait until 2012. This time we will have a record of Obama's actions and non-actions and this time America should reject him at the polls the way they overwhelmingly rejected fellow Democrat losers such as McGovern, Dukakis, Carter and Kerry in years past.

We, as Americans, can still be proud we elected a Black man as our President, our national symbol to the world. However, we Americans have to realize the damage this man has done and reject him, not because of his skin tone, but for his lack of judgment, his failed actions his growing failures to inspire and lead our nation.

We can and must do better in our Presidential choice in 2012.

I do strongly believe we elected Obama President for the right reasons. We just didn't know enough about him, things we now know. We did it for the right reasons; it just didn't turn out to be in America's best interest.

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