Barak Obama

Alright, good one America. You kind of bombed on the last two elections, but you came through this time. Not sure the rest of us are ready to let you slide for Bush, however, we will start inviting you to the cool parties again.

It was interesting being here in China for the election, normally I'd be glued to the internet and tv keen to get any sort of update I could. However, this time I was out exploring the Summer Palace in China. I remember clearly the older Scotsman who told us the news that McCain had conceded we were all pleasantly surprised that it was official.

However, I think then and now think that the real news is the Senate race, it's been pretty clear for 6+ weeks that we were headed to and Obama win, even if we were reluctant to actually say the words. The real race was in the end for the Seante where the Democrats picked up 6 seats to give them 55 with a few still(!?) left to be decided. I think this is where the Obama agenda could be held up and if the party was able to reach 60 seats it would've been a lot stronger because it would have been filibuster proof, close but not quite.

It's interesting Chris and I've been casually keeping an ear out ever since he pointed out that he'd heard the name Obama a number of times in Chinese conversations. While neither of us no what they are saying it is clear that people are very aware of this election and for the most part I suppose this is a good thing.

I've had a lot of time to think about this election and I've been left with a few ideas that are incomplete but I'd welcome feedback about

1. Does an American election of a charismatic leader increase the bottom up pressure on the Chinese government for further democratization? The fact that everybody is talking about a leader they are impressed by that who was elected must have some members of the party worried. While many Chinese have pointed out to me in conversations that China is simply too big to be adequately administered by a democracy it must also strike them the contrast in personality by the President-elect and President Hu

2. When he becomes President, Barak Obama is not going to be god! I've heard and read some much utter rubbish about what he will and will not on blogs/facebook/hostel cafes that I feel this fact needs to be pointed out. Most of his first terms agenda/political capital will be spent on trying to address the short term probelms of the economic crisis while hopefully getting ahead of the curve in the long term. All troops will not magically redeploy from Iraq to return home to start doing socialized medicine in the streets.

Please do try to temper expectations.

3. I read his book and I am pretty into the hype. It is interesting, the power of an election. Americans went from being "Canadians" while the traveled back to AMERICANS! and while I can not gauge this I bet a lot of peoples' first words to them while travelling will change from "Bush bad!" to "Obama good!" This is part of the power of democracy it can cleanse alot of the negative associations. An insanely long campaign that occured almost exclusively on American soil is able to suddenly and effectively make people excited about the country again. Like I joked in the opening paragraph, welcome back to the cool parties America

4. Canada, please care as much about our elections as you do about the American ones. The next ass who goes off about how great and important Obama is without being able to name some Cabinet Ministers, there MP and the last...5+ Prime Ministers is getting a punch

5. If election fatigue hasn't crushed you, and it really isn't that hard go vote in upcoming Civic Elections. I spent 5 hours to vote in the Federal Election, surely you can take the time to pick up a newspaper and pop down to a polling station