About a year ago, my wife and I decided we would really make a concerted effort to become as knowledgeable as possible about this election. We challenged each other daily...( and I mean daily) to stay informed and to not simply be satisfied with the hype of either candidate. This was a kool-aid free zone, lol. We considered info from the right and the left. For every hour of Fox News we watched, there was an hour of MSNBC or CNN to follow it. POTUS08 was on most of the time on my XM satellite radio. We both talked to local party chairpersons about the various issues of these two men. It got to the point where we both had memorized their stump speeches. As an example to our kids, we felt this was important beyond just for ourselves...

Pleased to say that our oldest daughter voted in her first election. The two oldest girls (20 and 16) both knew roughly where each candidate stood on the major issues. We watched the 4 debates as a family...

The more research and info we considered, we all wound up supporting Obama. Not blindly mind you. He is inexperienced, he has not always understood some of the ramifications of some of the people in his past, he is the most liberal senator currently serving, etc. He also has the burden of being the first minority President and we hope that outside forces/interests don't make that become a burden or distraction to him.

For me, I generally preferred his style and his substance over McCain's. The GOP seemed to, in their Rovian ways, be intent on tearing down, misleading Obama's policies and try to advance their cause on the platform of fear. It was embarrassing after awhile to hear MCcain start to call himself the "change" candidate when Obama had been doing that from the start. His selection of Palin was to us an ominous sign of questionable judgment. It seemed to us that the GOP strategy was "...If we just keep saying these falsehoods over and over and over again, people will believe it!"

I had a nice talk last week at a funeral with an old marine. He asked me what I thought about the election and told me no matter who won he'd feel fine about it. He explained to me that he was probably going to vote for McCain, but wasn't sure. He also said if Obama won, he'd be happy in a different way. To see how far this country has come when a black man can be voted into office without playing the race card, he thought was one of the most encouraging things he'd seen in his lifetime. He also thought Obama was probably smarter than JM was...

In the end, the quality of Obama's ideas, intelligence and the style and grace with which he communicated them earned him my vote.

Watching his speech last night, it reminded me of two other days in my life. Both of these days were days of emotion and strong feelings of patriotism. There were VERY different days however. One was 9/11...the other was back in 1980 when the US beat the Russians in hockey during the Olympics.

Now, as others have said, its time for us to do what we can to make our country and lives better. If we spend the next 4 years doing everything we can to tear Obama down, then we will have done ourselves a dis-service.

No free passes for him, and its a good thing Dems didn't get a "super majority." He needs to be as smart, if not smarter than he was during his campaign as he serves as President.

Lots of work to do...God Bless our new president and our country...

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Bill in Dayton

[This message has been edited by Bill in Dayton (edited 11-05-2008).]

[This message has been edited by Bill in Dayton (edited 11-05-2008).]