Confused About Obama

2009-01-23T13:35:55-08:00

You know, I was 18 when Bush came into power. I had embarrassingly weak knowledge of politics, and didn’t vote in the election despite some people getting rather annoyed with me about it. I argued at the time (and I stand by this), that people should only vote if they know enough to vote the right way. At the time, I felt like I didn’t know enough.

It’s hard to remember how things were back then. Bush was obviously an idiot, but at the same time, it wasn’t obvious how much damage he would do (or that somehow he’d last eight years). My first hint that he was terrible was his thinking on stem cells, which pretty indisputably slowed medicine research for about a decade. Once I heard about this issue, I knew I should have voted, and became fairly active reading the news and learning the issues.

In a way, I can thank the Bush administration for being one of the most corrupt, damaging, and all-around God-awful regimes in American history. If it hadn’t been so terrible, I might not have gotten so interested. I think this is true for many of my friends as well.

I just spent some time looking at a few of Obama’s executive orders and memos, and of the few I read, it’s pretty impressive. It’s been less than a week, and suddenly I’m having a lot more trouble being critical of the administration. If I’m not supposed to rag on Bush anymore, in a way, what do I do? Do I praise Obama? That’s not really my style. Maybe I should be critical of the Obama administration? But there’s not a lot to be too critical of just yet.

I’m a bit confused, in a good way. Here’s to hoping that Obama can keep it up, and to a new regime.

Michael Jay Lissner

Confused About Obama