And the majority of voters did not have that ability in 2008 and many do not have that ability today, because it was hijacked by an over riding desire to right past wrongs by electing a Black candidate.
I just don't think you really understand the history of this country, or the psychology driving it.
George W. Bush, failed the United States of America, unlike most President's have in the history of our Republic. The fact that Dick Cheney, was sitting in a secure room during 911, taking verbal input from a "Young Man" running back and forth into Cheney's physical presence, calling out
time and distance on an
and aircraft that the FAA lost and NORAD could not find, is proof positive that the Administration at that time was corrupt beyond imagination and knew something about 911 before it happened. Couple that fact with the other fact, that Bush, had no domestic agenda at all and basically pulled the trigger on sending the nation over an economic cliff, with what amounted to be a $3 trillion war effort overseas for oil that did not belong to us - that makes Bush, something the American People wanted to get rid of and replace with something completely different.
Change is exactly what they got - despite the rhetoric from those who inaccurately preach that Obama is a third Bush term - that's just simply false.
Electing Obama, had everything to do with his tenacity as a Candidate for President and his massage of change and hope - at a time when the country was doing nothing less than literally falling apart at the seams, and when McCain had basically announced that he did not know much about "economic issues" and after selecting as his running mate, a person who was so incredibly incompetent, that it embarrassed even the core Republican Party initially, until they realized that they had to finally get on-board and support that which they were not all that fired-up about supporting.
Candidate Obama, on the campaign trail, spent a huge amount of time talking to the American People about his new vision for an Economy that was based in Clean & Renewable Energy Technologies and making sure that the United States became the leader in exporting new energy technology throughout the world, while having and maintaining the most educated population, ready, able and willing to take on the challenges of a new energy technology world. The VAST majority of that campaign thrust got hammered to the back seat, when the 2008 economic implosion became a reality and TARP/Stimulus took over the President's primary focus.
I am certain that we would be well on our way towards building that new energy technology based economy, had the 2008 economic implosion never happened. This is the background story about Obama's Presidency that nobody is talking about. He had a revolutionary agenda for how to move our economy into the future, but the vast majority of that got shocked out of existence with the onset of the great recession.
Now, the money is spent on recovery - instead of building a new economy. But, nobody wants to be honest enough to talk about that fact. This President was not a Socialist - he was one of the few visionaries running for the White House, that we've ever had. Only President Kennedy, talked about the Space Program ("putting a man on the moon in this decade and the other thing...") with the same amount of vigor that this President talked about a New Energy Economy that thrust the country into the lead on exports and technology patents.
Such an economy would have been huge. We would have produced a huge surplus of jobs in this country and we would have been forced to recruit people from other countries, just to help us build-out our new clean and renewable energy based economy - mostly because we would not have been able to graduate enough Engineers, Scientists and Technicians to keep pace with growth.
Somehow, his vision has not been remembered, even by those who supported him in 2008. It is an absolute shame - that he gets a bad wrap given the facts. Mostly because people remember what they want to remember and when things get tough, they often times don't retain their intellectual honesty. But, the fact of the matter is that this President had a very Bold Economic Agenda that would a have sparked tens of millions of new technology jobs.
How soon we forget.