[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bCuEXrU-yQ]

I appeared on Al-Jazeera’s World News yesterday evening to discuss Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama’s selection of Rahm Emmanuel and his transition to becoming president. We all saw how fervent and emotional Obama’s supporters were over his election win this week, but it’s also interesting to see how much international adulation there is of Obama.

I explained that both domestically and abroad, a ton of irrational expectations are being piled on Obama, expectations he can’t possibly meet.

Despite his lack of experience, Obama certainly is an impressive individual–intelligent and a great communicator. (Perhaps most importantly, he’s young and strong enough to still have some energy left after this absurdly long/absurdly grueling American-style presidential election/fiasco.)

But he’s got an economic crisis, a huge budget deficit and two wars, and his supporters are expecting way, way too much of him. I doubt he’ll be able to follow through on most of his ambitious plans, some of which are problematic anyway.

Speaking of Obama’s supporters, a somewhat embittered Republican friend of mine emailed me the absolutely wicked Onion video above. He’s had it up to here with his co-workers’ endless enthusiasm over Obama, and distributing this video is his revenge…

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Political Parties/Presidential Election/Major Elections.