Hello, Mr. President!

In this era of rampant governmental corruption and ill-fated political choices, a strong leader dedicated to American ideals provides the necessary cure to all of our nation's ailments.

I feel that Barack Obama is not that leader.

Tonight, I witnessed many of my friends and thousands of strangers raucously celebrating the election of Sen. Obama, and found this the necessary catalyst to properly express my opinion. Today's society provides a useful outlet for this purpose through the advent of blogs.

I would like to clarify a few things:
1. I am not a Republican, nor am I a John McCain supporter.
2. I feel that neither McCain nor Obama were proper choices for our country, though I will say I view McCain as the lesser of two evils.
3. I am not yet of voting age, simply a high school debater with an interest in politics and, now, a degree of contempt for the choices made by the voting community.

In this, my maiden voyage into the sea of political blogs, I would like to address why I feel Obama won in the manner that he did.

First, we must examine an essential demographic that has leaned much more to the liberal side than the conservative: Voters under the age of thirty. This group greatly bolstered Obama's numbers more than McCain's, as 60% of "young" voters favored Obama, while only 39% supported McCain, according to a pre-election poll aired during the results. As a young person, I am highly aware of the usual reasoning behind this decision: Obama, a "black" man(a term I use with some hesitance, as I am also biracial and do not understand a sense of African-American camaraderie with the man) epitomized drastic change in government, as well as demonstrated just how progressive our generation is.

This faulty reasoning may or may not prove itself to be destructive to American society. Now, I do concede some voters did more than adequate research before weighing their decisions; for instance, my mother, a black woman, compared McCain and Obama's voting records extensively before choosing to go liberal. (For the record, she voted for George W. Bush in both 2000 and 2004.) These people truly felt that Obama was the best choice, and I commend that. However, many people view Obama as a solution to our problems based on the standard that he's different, thus he must be better. This conclusion, generally reached without any real substantiation, is highly fallacious in nature. Furthermore, Obama's appeal stems from his image as a young, virile man of the people, while McCain tends to be categorized as "just another" older, affluent white man, ergo inherently a clone of W. While it is true McCain's views parallel Bush's in some regards, the situation stands as Sen. McCain himself said: if someone wanted to run against George W. Bush, they should have run four years ago. To the new voter, though, McCain appears the antithesis of Obama's movement; boring, dry, traditional. It matters not what changes are achieved as long as there are indeed changes.

What a lot of people overlook, however, is that no matter who was elected, there would be change. Sticking to our status quo would prove highly inflammatory and virtually impossible in 2009, meaning that any candidate represents change. Obama's change is much more intangible, though; he represents the American Dream in the sense that you can be anyone and become president. My problem with this remains that,
a) McCain is the more experienced politician.
b) Neither candidate proves himself particularly distinguished as far as voting records go.
c) Obama presented himself as even more vague than McCain is.

Thus I conclude that the reasons for Obama's election, in the younger demographic at least, were generally superficial.