Consider Obama's Pending Cynics

By Joseph Kellard


Over at the Harry Binswanger List, a subscriber wrote the following about the presidential election:

“What's really depressing is that 70% of newly registered voters (if I heard Fox News correctly) voted for Obama. Welcome to the future.”

While this is discouraging news, we must project where these new, mostly younger voters will be after Obama's four-year term. When the reality of the president-elect's policies smack them across the face -- whether it's when his spinelessness toward our enemies emboldens them to slaughter more Americans, or when his socialist policies further sickens our ill economy, or when he starts inviting Rev. Jeremiah Wright-types to the White House to talk slave reparations, or when he's unable to deliver on his vague and impossible promises on a host of issues from the environment to health care --I'm sure many of them will, eventually, become disillusioned by and cynical of their political Messiah.

These teen and 20-something voters may come to realize, even if not explicitly, that what Obama originally offered was not actual "change," but rather the same tired, failed Leftist policies that their teachers and professors never taught them about in their economics and history classes. The worst among them, of course, will stick by Obama, evading reality to defend and rationalize even his most obvious disasters -- encouraged, in part, by a still worshiping mainstream media.

But this time around, as against the Carter and Clinton years, these cynics will have a new, potent force to reckon with: an increasing number of Objectivist activists. Following the lead of the Ayn Rand Institute and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, we will offer them a realistic alternative before they give up and start attending Sunday Mass, as Obama did and found Rev. Wright instead of Ayn Rand.

After writing the above, I read this New York Times article that seems to buttress this post: "With Victory in Hand, Obama Aides Say Task Now Is to Temper High Expectations”:

http://tinyurl.com/59sahu

"President-elect Barack Obama has begun an effort to tamp down what his aides fear are unusually high expectations among his supporters, and will remind Americans regularly throughout the transition that the nation's challenges are substantial and will take time to address."


Joseph Kellard is a journalist and commentator living in New York. Contact him at Theainet1@optonline.net.