In the midst of an economic crisis, Obama will not have time to deal with world affairs, so this will be a domestic presidency.

more importantly doesn't this show the kind of "friends" Bill Kristol has?

The world's attitudes to race cannot be slotted into the same prism we look through race with. Of course Kristol is trying to cram a completely different philosophy towards life through his myopic worldview.

Right now, the US is like this one-year-old child sitting in its front yard. The rest of the world is watching us through the bay window in their house next door. And there the child sits in the sunshine, holding a turkey and swiss sandwich in one hand and a dog turd in the other.

And the world is just holding its breath and hoping that the kid has the sense to eat the right thing.

more importantly doesn't this show the kind of "friends" Bill Kristol has?

The reference was to Nicholas Kristoff, not Bill Kristol.

"...And may I just say, these Cool Ranch Doritos are just delicious. Even better when washed down with a cool, refreshing Peach Snapple."

Just kidding. Couldn't resist.

more importantly doesn't this show the kind of "friends" Bill Kristol has?

Nick Kristof, not Bill Kristol. Two totally different guys.

chrenson -
Point taken, but who the hell gives a one year-old a turkey and swiss? Safe to assume you don't have kids?

g -
This was Nick Kristof, not Bill Kristol.

MattYoung said:
In the midst of an economic crisis, Obama will not have time to deal with world affairs, so this will be a domestic presidency.

Presidents often take office with a list issues that they intend to focus on. Events usually make them change their mind.

Dubya took office thinking that terrorism wasn't a serious threat.

Clinton thought we finally had "peace in our time", until Somalia and Bosnia.

Bush Sr. thought he would have to focus on the breakup of the Soviet Union, but never thought he'd lead a U.N. coalition against Iraq.

Reagan was probably the only president who was able to follow his agenda -- fight communism and transform America into a conservative ideal.

Carter had Nixon's economy to fix. Iran and Afghanistan were complete surprises.

The economic crisis is global and is going to take a coordinated international effort, and hopefully a long look at trade and labor policies.

In the midst of an economic crisis, Obama will not have time to deal with world affairs, so this will be a domestic presidency.

Unlike Bush, Obama seems to be capable of dealing with more than one thing at a time. He also seems to understand the Golden Rule of management: Do those things that only the manager can do and delegate the rest to capable people.

chrenson -
Point taken, but who the hell gives a one year-old a turkey and swiss? Safe to assume you don't have kids? - 'trane

Considering the level of awareness among a majority of voters, I think chrenson's metaphor is absolutely perfect.

Bill Kristol? Please, do not besmirch Yamhill, Oregon's favorite son.

I think Obama's history says that he will be a politician and president who avoids confrontation with the right.

Don't expect big departures in US domestic or foreign policy from past presidents. Think JFK: a form of moderate centrism (although right wing pundits will depict it as otherwise-- see WJ Clinton's regime and the 'great right wing noise machine'). This will not be a replay of LBJ, the most liberal president of modern American history (post FDR).

And American foreign policy towards the Middle East and other issues will change little, although it will be, perhaps, less belicose. GWB's own efforts to reach out to Africa have been largely ignored, but are historic.

In that sense a President Obama will disappoint many liberal European critics.

However the bare fact of his election will call into question the tacit assumption that your politics are just like ours: a cosy ringside for the elites.

David Cameron and most of his key advisers, after all, went to the same *high school* (Eton) not just the same university (Oxford). And many of them are interrelated by blood. France it is the Grandes Ecoles (except for Sarkozy himself, the insider's outsider).

America, by contrast, is about to elect someone who is from the educational elite, but whose father was from *Kenya* and whose family did not come from elite origins.

Almost no other developed country on the planet could elect a leader of half-African parentage. Even in Brasil I think it would be an issue.

It will be a historic moment for America in the eyes of the rest of the world. A 'Shining City on the Hill'.

Presidents often take office with a list issues that they intend to focus on. Events usually make them change their mind.

True. And it's how they choose to respond to them that shows the real strengths and weaknesses.

Dubya took office thinking that terrorism wasn't a serious threat.

Shrub is a moron coming and going. He didn't really have the first clue about the scope of the office.

Clinton thought we finally had "peace in our time", until Somalia and Bosnia.

Somalia was inherited, and Clinton's escalation was a huge mistake. Bosnia was a success only because the Russians weren't flush with oil capital at that point. And don't forget our inaction in Rwanda.

Bush Sr. thought he would have to focus on the breakup of the Soviet Union, but never thought he'd lead a U.N. coalition against Iraq.

The first Gulf War was unnecessary. We did it to save the Saudis, not the Kuwaitis.

Reagan was probably the only president who was able to follow his agenda -- fight communism and transform America into a conservative ideal.

Grenada, Lebanon and Latin America. We killed or helped kill more people in these relatively low intensity conflicts than were killed in the first Gulf War.

Carter had Nixon's economy to fix. Iran and Afghanistan were complete surprises. Posted by: SteveT

No. Carter inherited the fallout from the first "oil crisis" and created the second by foolishly allowing the shah, who ruined a good thing in Iran, to come to the U.S. As for Afghanistan, we're still dealing with the aftermath of what Reagan administration, eventually, did there.

DanP -
You'll get no disagreement from me on that. I was just trying to pull his/her chain a bit. What can I say - I'm a little bored this morning.

C-SPAN ran some of Zogby's daily averaged poll results recently. The category of Whites support for Obama has held steady at only 40%. If Obama wins the election, it will not be because a majority of Whites voted for him.

George H.W. Bush is to be given the Dole Award for Leadership at the University of Kansas.

That award, undoubtedly, is not for leadership in raising a child.

'trane: who the hell gives a one year-old a turkey and swiss? Safe to assume you don't have kids?

I forgot to mention that the turkey and swiss sandwich had been pureed in a blender. And is served at just above room temperature.

We've got one kid, a ten-year-old daughter. She's a chain-yanker too. Cheers!

oh, there's no question that people outside the US understand the stakes (as do people inside the US, of course) I have never had so many strangers stop me and say something to me as I did wearing an Obama shirt in the UK on Friday. it wasn't unusual, I would wager a full third of the people on my flight out wed night to Heathrow were wearing some kind of Obama paraphenalia. I have never seen anything like it. you think the mainstream media here loves Obama? check out the English press. they practically slobber over him. I had people ask me questions, serious, well thought out questions, about the election, the process, everything. remarkable.

and in case anyone wants a comparison, I was also out of the country (in either the UK or Australia) leading up to the 2000, 2002 and 2006 elections, 2004 I was working for a campaign) so I am familiar with what normal has been.

My take away was the reminder that many Asians I have encountered are far more racist than we are. There was the chat with a fellow assistant professor at a Cal State college who couldn't get over that my name was Dong, yet I was white, because this simply couldn't happen with her family. There was my Filippina friend who dated an Asian man and then moved in with him, without his every letting his family know he even had a girlfriend. These were recent events.

But I have to say I was shocked when I read recently in The Week that European soccer fans bring stuffed monkeys to games and make hooting noises at black players. The editorialist was feeling very proud that this practice had been stopped in England --- meaning, of course, that it had been occurring, but was no longer being tolerated.

Lord.

So I imagine that the smart people who tend to run governments in other countries will generally be relieved to find someone like themselves in charge of our country, but that Obama will encounter odd moments of racism, including protests against him that are unapologetically racist. But we can also hope that his example will help to erase some of that racism that people of African descent experience in so many places in the world.

I'm sorry to report this, but having lived for many year in a community where over 50% of the people were immigrants from China or Taiwan, I can tell you that many in these countries have a deep-seated racial bias against blacks.

I know a few of these people who are life long Democrats, hate Bush, hate Palin, don't trust McCain, but are voting McCain because Obama is black, and they think no black person can be intelligent.

Obama's presidency, if it is as successful as we expect it will, will transform the world.

Sorry, this sounds a little too much like one of Thomas Friedman's implausible taxi drivers. How had this Chinese woman missed seeing that two successive U.S. Secretaries of State were African-Americans?

Steve - advertising masquerading as content is not your style - I can understand (but do not approve) of a one-per day plug for the magazine - but two? Please.