Why I voted for President Obama (and why I probably won't do it again)

Welcome to Tony Island Blog!

You may have gotten the impression from the various political posts here that I didn't vote for President Obama...and, you'd be wrong.

I wanted to let you into my thought process when I went to vote in November, 2008. But, to do that, we first have to travel back slightly further to 2004. President Bush was running for re-election. While I was never a huge fan of Bush, as a "loyal" Republican, I voted for him anyway. I actually wanted him to win so that the 2008 Presidential field, on both sides of the aisle, would be wide open. We'd have a large group of candidates from which to choose. And, so, as fate would have it, Bush won a second term and 2008 brought us a large field of Presidential candidates.

As the election season wore on, the American system of primaries, caucuses and other oddities winnowed down the large field to two men: McCain and Obama. I wasn't really that happy with either choice. I didn't follow the election rhetoric much - so I didn't know where either man stood on many issues. But, for whatever reason, I wasn't convinced that McCain had what it took to be President. He seemed to have won by default - that is, he ran so many times before he was bound to finally win the nomination (see "Bob Dole" for a similar storyline).

Thus I turned to Obama. In Obama, I saw several things - an historic vote for the first black President (I had only wished that Colin Powell had run years earlier), a baby boomer of my generation (ie, he was on the tail end of the baby boom as I am) and a young man who had the energy and zest to be President (McCain always seemed dead to me).

I also thought Obama would be a great National Healer - for black Americans, he would be a role model, someone to look up to and aspire to. It was heartwarming to hear so many black children say "Now I can be President too when I grow up" I also thought it would help heal the racial divide in this country - that is, if blacks and whites voted for a black man we could show the nation and the world that we had put much (if not all) of our racial hatred behind us.

Of course, it was only AFTER the election did I realize what we actually got - a far Left progressive that's hell bent on spending us into oblivion - and then bankrupting us into socialism.

UGH.

That's the last time I let me heart into the voting booth with me!

Thanks for reading Tony Island Blog!