The American population seems to be psychysophrenic in the way that they voted this year. For instance voters in California voted for Obama but also for banning gay marriages. While in Missouri, voters were even about who they wanted for president, but voted by a large percentage to ban gays from adopting children. Although Obama wants to unite the American people, a large segment of the American poplulation fears others who are somehow different from them. I believe that this is residue from the politics of fear that started in the nineties and continued during the second Bush administration. This politics of fear makes the American people want to return to the good old days of the fifties. But during the fifities a lot of civil rights were taken away and now seemed to imperil again with the current discrimination against gays. Obama must tell the American people that it is not just up to him to unite the country, but also for Americans must abandon their personal hatred themselves. To get Americans to overcome their fear and embrace the humanity of everyone maybe tougher than fixing the economy.

 

P.S. I'm not gay, but just sick of fear factor politics.

I hope that Obama does not make the same mistakes as Clinton did in his first term. In his first term Clinton had a opportunity to start a really progressive economic agenda under the leadership of Robert Reich. Instead Clinton listened to the free market advice of Bob Rueben.  Rejecting the progressive economic policies of Robert Reich, Clinton married himself toward the ideology of Greenspan and Rueben. This made the eight years of Bill Clinton's presidency  seem as though they were wasted years and it may have contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat in the Democratic primaries. Now it seems that Obama is making the same mistake as Clinton did in his first term because, according to an article by Mike Allen in Politico, Larry Summers is on the list to be Treasury Secretary in the future Obama administration. Larry Summers shares the same free market ideology as Hank Paulson. Obama, like Clinton, is hitching up to the free market ideology that got us into this mess. I wish that Obama would at least pick Paul Krugman or Robert Reich as Treasury Secretary since their economic ideas are much to the heart of most progressives unlike the free market ideology of Larry Summers. By picking either Krugman or Reich, Obama would have proven that he has the courage to put this country on a new progressive direction of real change.