"Things can only get better" - USA

Like a number of UK productions like "The Office" and "Life on Mars", the Blair/Brown 97 show has opened in the US.

Congratulations President-elect Obama, on getting elected when giving so little detail of what you intend to do. You have skilfully allowed people to project their disparate hopes and wishes onto you, without disabusing them of their misapprehensions (some might question the morality of such a move).

In the UK when Labour pulled of the same trick all that happened is that the standards in public life dropped, thugs were employed as government press officers, spin and announcements replaced action and the debt in our society rose to record levels which we can no longer afford.

Needless the BBC is in seventh heaven today as their candidate won.

I wish America well, but I think you've made a mistake in giving Mr Obama his first real job.

Update: For the most realistic view from the UK see here ....

What your supporters say about you

It is of course unfair to accuse someone with the views of their supporters. However Cranmer has an interesting analysis to the influence of Christian belief on voting intentions in the US here.

He ends by stating:

"It is intriguing that Senator Obama's support is strongest amongst the apostate and recalcitrant, and that he attracts the recusants and heretics. One wonders to which God he prayed to be made a servant."

In the UK Obama is very much admired in soft Christian circles, with his image appearing on the front of a key Christian magazine this month.

Man in a Shed is afraid the explanation is the one Ali G would give.

Obama looks scary to me. Like Gordon Brown he's clearly been manipulating his way to where he is now, and in the mean time has achieved virtually nothing except getting elected, and then under circumstances that if it had been a (UK) Conservative politician the BBC would have been banging on about for months and months.

It certainly looks like the good people, with or without Acron, of the US will make him President.

I wonder if they really know what their doing ? Todays First Post repeats my point about this being the New Labour 97 moment for the US where peoples desires are projected onto a politician.

If Cranmer is onto something then this should be no surprise. I hope its nothing and that Obama, if elected, turns out to be a president in the mould of Lincoln, not Clinton. But I'm not holding out much hope, because that sort of unfounded wishful thinking is what landed the UK in the mess its in today.