UP Ibalon Bicol: Barack Obama's Incredible Run and a Hope

Barack Obama's Incredible Run and a Hope

1/01/2009 | Posted by myty555 | Edit Post

Two years ago not many has heard of the freshman Senator Barack Obama. Now he is the incoming US President. When I first heard about his run I thought he was just an ambitious politician aiming to put his name on the map in the hope that it will help in a future run. After all, many politicians in the US used this ploy.

I did not think he would win the Democratic primaries. Many contenders quit after a few months when funds dry up and some even quit the campaign trail in debt. I also did not think he was capable of outlasting Senator Hillary Clinton who also happened to be the wife of a formidable and popular former President who was functioning as her quarterback and adviser.

When he became the Democratic party nominee he was already the llamado (odds-on favorite). He stumbled for a while but then he recovered quickly to beat the Republican candidate who was clobbered by the US economic crisis and who did not help himself by making the watched-for gaffes.

I hope Barack Obama's incredible run continues into the Oval Office. The world certainly needs it because it is facing a crisis of historic proportions and it is in the US where it all started. The solutions need to be found in the US and not anywhere else.

I also hope that Barack Obama will become a US president that can connect with the outside world (unlike his predecessor who sneer at it). The unipolar world and bi-polar world has ceased long ago and it is time for the US to listen and pay attention to the opinion and concerns of other countries and not only look after its own strategic interests.

This plea is not about begging for pittance or pats in the back. The US should begin to realize that it makes a big portion of its profits outside their borders and this contributes to her prosperity. The US should disabuse itself that its investments abroad are the engines of the other nations' prosperity. They invested for profit, no more, no less and all altruistic pretense should simply be dropped.

If the US will only understand that other nations contribute to their prosperity maybe they will become more graceful and engaging in their actions abroad. President-elect Obama has close foreign genes and he spent part of his youth abroad. I hope this will influence him and make him different from his predecessors.