Obama Lays Plans To Kill Expectations

[TGO David]

By Tim Reid, The Times of London

Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harboring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

The sudden financial crisis and the prospect of a deep and painful recession have increased the urgency inside the Obama team to bring people down to earth, after a campaign in which his soaring rhetoric and promises of "hope" and "change" are now confronted with the reality of a stricken economy.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair."

The aide said that Obama himself was the first to realize that expectations risked being inflated.

In an interview with a Colorado radio station, Obama appeared to be engaged already in expectation lowering. Asked about his goals for the first hundred days, he said he would need more time to tackle such big and costly issues as health care reform, global warming and Iraq.

"The first hundred days is going to be important, but it's probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference," he said. He has also been reminding crowds in recent days how "hard" it will be to achieve his goals, and that it will take time.

"I won't stand here and pretend that any of this will be easy -- especially now," Obama told a rally in Sarasota, Florida, yesterday, citing "the cost of this economic crisis, and the cost of the war in Iraq." Obama's transition team is headed by John Podesta, a Washington veteran and a former chief-of-staff to Bill Clinton. He has spent months overseeing a virtual Democratic government-in-exile to plan a smooth transition should Obama emerge victorious next week.

The plans are so far advanced that an Obama Cabinet has been largely decided upon, with the expectation that most of his senior appointments could be announced shortly after election day.

BELIEVE! HOPE! CHANGE! Holy ****!!! You mean people really expect us to pull this off? DAMAGE CONTROL! DAMAGE CONTROL!!!!

[towerclimber37]

oh boy.. I can't WAIT till all the folks that vote for Obama find out that he's just a mortal. I also am willing to bet that if he screws up, he'll be the first and last "black man" to win office for a long, long time.

[Guest Verbal Kint]

Big surprise. Wait till election week, then lower your political stances, so it's too late for the majority (and those who already voted) to catch wind of it. Nice.

God, our country truly has gone down the ****ter. As someone mentioned just a few mins ago... "I still can't believe that we're at war with those mother****ers and yet we've got one about to be voted into the highest public office in this country. Makes me want to throw up".

That noise you hear is the founding fathers rolling over in their graves.

[TGO David]

I posted a link to a story refuting Obama's "African American" heritage a few days ago. In that story, the author made a fairly secure case against those claims by pointing out that Obama's name and his heritage are very much Muslim and not African. He is about as black as I am, and I'm the whitest guy I know.

Indeed it sickens me to think that we're at war with Muslim extremists and that the fundamental roots of Islam do not allow them to coexist peacefully with anyone who is not a Muslim... anyone who is an Infidel; yet here we are on the verge of having a man with indisputable ties to Muslim culture being elected as the next Commander in Chief.

I think that the Liberal American sheep are so distraught over the fact that Muslim fanatics want to kill us, that at some base, perhaps even subconscious level they have rationalized that having a POTUS with Muslim heritage will take us out of the crosshairs.

AND, even if it does... at what cost will it be?

Obama's status as a naturalized citizen has been called to question and yet the mainstream media refuses to give it any attention. His campaign has sued to keep it quiet and sued to keep it tied up in the courts where it cannot do any immediate damage to him. Very, very tricky. Very, very underhanded. Very, very suspect.

I'm nauseated by the thought of this man sitting in the White House. I'm nauseated at the thought of having to refer to him as our President. I'm nauseated at the thought that I would prefer a dozen John Kerrys or Al Gores to this Obamination. I'm nauseated that so many of this nation's socially articulate, well educated, intellectual elitists are so willing to put aside true logic and reason, and pander for a false sense of HOPE.

Yes, we need change in our country. Desperately. But we don't need THIS kind of change and I'm scared as hell that we're going to get it no matter what.

God help us.