A PAPPAS VIEW PREDICTION -- Obama Will be Our Next President

In 15 days, we get a chance to take our country back from the cynical, the fearful, the shortsighted, the vengeful, and the greedy ... after eight years of misery.

I meant to make this prediction a week or so ago, but I've been too busy to post this blog.

I am confident Barack Obama will be our next president ... barring a horrible event I will not even mention or think about.

In all of the debates, Obama has come across as cool, calm, knowledgeable, smart, visionary and above all, presidential.

By stark contrast, McCain has appeared erratic, cantankerous, disrespectful, angry, frustrated, shortsighted, tired and lacking in ideas or vision. McBush as I like to call him is quick to fall back on his checkered past in Congress and on his war experience.

However, McCain has no real solutions for getting us out of this economic mess or our foreign entanglements. In fact, his lame policies would only continue Bush' s debacle. He doesn't have a firm grasp of the economy, which is all the public is thinking about right now.

Even his campaign's latest hail mary ploy -- appealing to Joe the Plumber backfired. Joe would benefit under a Obama's tax plan not McCain's.

McCain's health plan is a joke and won't do anything to change the existing broken system. He will also tax benefits which makes no sense.
Obama offers a health plan that promise universal health care to everyone. It will not fine small businesses -- that's another McCain lie.

Also it was so obvious in the last debate that all McCain has left is to attack Obama for past associations with Bill Ayers and ACORN. It is so pathetic. Obama explained his association with both well. They are non issues. I mean McCain has had troubling associations with Nixon stooge G. Gordon Liddy, who plotted his own terrorist acts and went to jail, and Oliver North who sponsored the Contra terrorists in El Salvador who tortured and killed thousands.

Obama will also seek policies to develop alternative energy and to get us out a wasteful and costly war in Iraq. He is offering new ideas and a fresh perspective.

McCain represents where we've already been. Obama represents where we want to go. He reminds me of the promise of Bill Clinton in 1992.

I hope Obama can help our country regain its economic power and repair our tattered standing around the world. I believe Obama is as Colin Powell described him this morning as a "transformational figure" who can bring this country together after years of contentious, partisan battles that have accomplished nothing.

McCain's temperament, and his anger issues are troublesome to say the least. We've seen what off the cuff cowboy diplomacy can do. The definition of a maverick is one who is masterless and roams on their own heeding no counsel.

Is this the kind of person we want running our country in what may be one of the most pivotal times in our history?

The challenge for Obama is immense. I have no illusions about that, but he is more than up to the job. Today Powell endorsed him and so did a number of newspapers that have rarely if ever supported a Democratic candidate -- L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, New York Times...the list goes on.

But I knew it earlier this year during his primary battles with Hillary Clinton. He offers a fresh perspective, a more inclusive approach and he just plain inspired me like no politician has in many years. People may have thought they wanted to have a beer with George W. Bush, but is that who you want running your country -- your fun beer buddy. I don't think so. Didn't work out so well.

I want someone like Obama who is thoughtful, calm, intelligent and willing to work with others to get things done on our behalf. Not someone who is stuck in divisive ideology and beholden to corporate interests like Bush and his cronies.

Only time will tell what kind of president Barack Obama will be, but this is an opportunity to change our country in such a fundamental way from the business as usual in Washington.

This is not only the change we need...it is the kind of change that America was created for.

George Pappas