What do you imagine you are basing these grand generalizations on? Just recently TPM was running a banner saying that 70% or whatever don't think Obama will be able to fix the economic crisis. And for that matter, who thinks that Obama himself is the solution to their problems? Obama will be the President, but there are very few problems a President, even a very good one, can solve single-handedly. Maybe a few that can be resolved with an executive order. But you'd have a hard time finding anyone who thinks that any of the major problems facing us right now can be solved by something that simple.

Do you even know (in real life) one single person who is in this large population of people you've cooked up in your imagination, a population of people who are thinking that Obama is the solution to all their problems, that he's some kind of messiah, etc? You seem to be extrapolating from blog entries and such that are cherry-picked to support the view you've become attached to.

The cherry-picking is obvious because everything that doesn't fit your view, all the disagreements over whether Obama is doing sensible things with the bailout proposals and with his cabinet selections and so on and so on and so on, none of that dents the reality you've created in your imagination. You're sitting there thousands of miles away with your nose buried in a browser hour after hour after hour, searching for photoshopped pictures and random snippets of text that will help you grind your axes. Why?

How about writing instead about something you know something about, something you know first-hand? Tell us about Spanish politics. Write a column on Spanish food, restaurants, wines, whatever. Post a "Spanish word of the day" blog. Those are presumably things you actually know something about. You'd be a lot better at it.

Obama can't fix it, but I believe he can make the situation much better.

David - Sometimes I wonder if you shouldn't be taking an anti-depressant ;)

Speaking for myself, for that is all I can do. I am not looking for Obama to "fix it" single handily.(That would be absurd and truly a false hope.) What I am hoping for is that he is an effective commander of the ship of state who brings on an intelligent group of officers and crew to help steer the US on a new course. Keep in mind it doesn't have to be a radical course shift. Any course shift would be a vast improvement of the one we have been on for the past eight years.

It really isn't that complex. The system is broken, but it is decisions and actions taken by people that broke it. Decisions and actions by people can get us back on track.

It will help to have a smart President for a change. Americans don't expect miracles, they just want competence.

Here is a nice quote

Britain has seen the Obama effect before. In 1997, a fresh-faced politician called Anthony Blair, promising the sun, the moon, and the stars, spoke with a passionate intensity that was somewhat lacking in detail and was elected to office in the land. His was a bright new dawn: a government that governed for the many not the few, as he put it, giving the country a fresh start after a long-lasting, decrepit, and exhausted government had been thoroughly discredited. Within a short time, this former unilateral-disarmer had proved himself the most belligerent and bellicose leader of Britain in recent times, willing to attack anyone as long as the victim couldn’t fight back. His protests at the corruption of the previous government soon seemed to be more at its trifling scale rather than its dishonesty. What had been but a cottage industry became wholesale looting, peculation, influence-peddling, and embezzlement, all under a careful cover of legality and deep public purpose. Nothing like it had been seen since the 18th century. Shady businessmen of every nationality (and none) were sure of a receptive ear (and purse). With freedom in his mouth, Prime Minister Blair created one new criminal offense a day for ten years and oversaw an unprecedented increase in bureaucratic control and official surveillance. Profligate with spending public funds to build an immense constituency of dependents, ranging from the near destitute to multimillionaires created by government contracts, he left a country—though of course not himself—on the brink of ruin. Speaking with evangelical fervor and giving every appearance of taking himself in, he behaved with a lack of scruple that left even cynics amazed and departed office the most reviled man in his nation’s recent history. I hope I am wrong in seeing an analogy with President-elect Obama. I hope that his rhetoric does not conceal as empty an interior as Blair’s. That his youthfulness and rhetorical idealism do not belie an authoritarianism. That his moralizing does not conceal a lack of scruple and contempt for due process. That by social justice he does not mean pork barrel. But I do not think the auguries are good. When I heard him promise that he would cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans, I wondered how anyone could believe it for a moment, or that he would go through the budget line by line, as he said he would. Compared to that, Fairyland is intensely real.

The United State is projected everywhere: the world is crawling with Americans and things American. Have you never been abroad?

David wants The U.S. to crash and burn so badly, it makes you wonder.

Maybe David needs to ask himself why it is he has a need to wish such horrid things on people he doesn't understand, or even know.

(shudder)

Creepy.