So We Have A New President-Elect...Now What?

I heard an interesting piece of news the day after Barack Obama won the White House. [It is not my style to quote secondary sources and then not identify them. I wish I could remember the journalist’s name. I think he was being interviewed by someone on PBS’s News Hour with Jim Lehrer. If anyone knows who he was—and whether I correctly caught the gist of his story—please so post.] He said that Iraqi youth, who had been very anti-American, were now hopeful that America would become friendlier (towards them). Violence is also down, he said, since the Obama-Biden win. He said that people were “cautiously optimistic” about America. What they had seen as a nation of people who hate Muslims they are daring to hope might be a friendly nation that had been ruled by a bad leader (George W. Bush). The fact that Americans elected a black man whose middle name is Hussein is seen as a hopeful sign.

During Obama’s acceptance speech, he made an interesting remark: “Americans...sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America.” He spoke of an administration of unprecedented bipartisanship (I’m beginning to really hate that word! Why can't we just say "nonpartisanship"?). Now it’s time for him to practice what he preached: put some qualified Republicans in his cabinet. If he does that—knowing full well that his party has control of both houses of Congress and the White House—there is ample impetus for the aforementioned international optimism.

What he will also have to do is make good on his advertised intent to reduce America’s sizable nuclear arsenal. Those nations that are bent on so arming themselves offer the rationale that, since America has nukes, they also need nukes to defend themselves. Since our conventional forces are easily sufficient to blast nearly any enemy back to the Stone Age, unilateral nuclear disarmament on our part would yield the dual benefits of knocking the wind out of their rationales' sails and maintaining U.S. military supremacy in a world generally aware of the untenability of nuclear warfare. However, those benefits are only likely to accrue if one is dealing with rational people. Anyone seriously considering constructing a nuclear arsenal must at least be suspected of having a screw loose somewhere. It is disturbing, to say the least, that Obama has forsworn “preconditions” re. normalizing diplomatic relations with such despotic regimes as Iran and North Korea. One can only hope that, as he spends time with outgoing Bush Administration officials—who have spent the last several years dealing with these insane thugs, he will realize the rashness of that earlier decision and compose a short list of prerequisite conditions that must exist before diplomatic relations can be normalized.

As I earlier wrote in Confessions of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Wannabe (PublishAmerica, 2007), it has long been my practice to vote for candidates whose political agenda—insofar as possible—match my own. I generally favor support for those who cannot help themselves, regulation of those who help themselves to too much, and liberty for pretty much everyone else. At the top of my list of “those who cannot help themselves” is a category that I call “The Unborn”. Apart from this sizable stumbling block, I find that President-Elect Obama and I differ on surprisingly little. Indeed, were it not for the fact that he apparently does not regard unborn children as “human”, I might well have worked to elect him. Reluctant though I am to support his likely nominees for the U.S. Supreme Court, I am no more eager to support more conservative ones. This is because certain positions on hot-button issues tend to be held by nominees of a given party. Whereas liberal nominees tend to favor so-called “reproductive choice”, a strong Congress (with regard to war powers), big government, and policies that favor the poor, conservatives tend to favor small government, anti-abortion laws, a strong-President system, capital punishment and policies that favor the rich. I am pro-life. That is, I oppose war, capital punishment, abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. I consider someone who opposes abortion rights but favors a huge military and supports the death penalty to be a bit of a hypocrite: war and execution are merely retroactive abortion.

It never ceases to amaze me how afraid Christian people seem to be of the prospect of a single world government coming on the earth. They don’t seem to realize that, before Christ can return to begin His reign on the earth, these things must come to pass. The Beast must rise; his government must come; the rapture must occur; the Millennium must run its course. These are mere signposts in history. They are not the end of all things. I know that God wants His Church to grow beyond denominations and funny-looking buildings. He also wants the world to grow beyond greed and suspicion; national borders and armies must go by the wayside and a united world must bow the knee to Him. I believe that He also wants His children to participate in governments that have grown beyond parties and factions. Barack Hussein Obama appears to hold some promise of being a “global” sort of President. If he can inspire the world to reach out from its enclaves and join in a new spirit of international peace and cooperation, how can that be a bad thing? On the other hand, if it’s all just talk, nothing will really change after all.

Whatever your opinion of Barack Obama or his politics, there is at least one reason to hope: despite the fact that his father was raised a Muslim yet was an avowed atheist by the time he grew up, and the fact that his mother was raised by nominal Christians who had no real interest in religion, he was baptized a Christian as an adult and had a “born-again” experience. He may not believe everything we do—such as, that all people are valuable, even before they’re born—but God has his ear. If we pray for him, God will convict him of his error. Let us not fall into the error of tearing him down instead of lifting him up in prayer. If each of us does his or her part to restore America’s esteem around the world, there’s no telling what good might be accomplished during Mr. Obama’s presidency. If we don't, instead of the "positive change" he spoke of during his campaign for election, we may just wind up with chump change.