mr president elect

Well just about everyone seems to have an opinion on this, so I guess I'll share mine too. Listening in to some of the UTV news items, I can't understand why Northern Ireland has such an interest in American politics, like it really is going to have a massive influence here. I'm pretty sure this small little island isn't too high on the agenda of a new President who has been left to pick up the pieces of a global recession with $11 trillion debt and 2 tragic wars that have only incited racial hate to a new extreme. However electing a first ever African American president speaks volumes for a country who now finally seems to put to bed it's own deep ingrained inner racism, which God willing will have an effect on the rest of the world (including N.Ireland's sectarian culture).

The election itself has proven to a bit of a landslide with Mr President Elect Obama taking more than twice the amount of electoral college votes than that of his competitor John McCain (349-162). The democrats now hold quite significant majorities in both the house and the senate (254-173 & 54-40 respectively). So this means any agenda that Mr Obama may have will be quite easy to put through the American 'parliament' so to speak. This creates the ability to run a small dictatorship with not enough power coming from the opposition. So with such great power comes great responsibility and it is our duty as Christians to be praying for the new President elect, that the Holy Spirit will guide his decisions, and the he will pursue peace, mercy and love rather than the ways of his predecessor ("Blessed are the peacemakers ~ Matt 5:9). Consitutionally speaking of course the President elect has no power until his inaugaration in January.

As Mr Obama himself so often mentioned it is indeed time for a change. The American public are tired of the bush/republican rule, in the same way we here in the UK are tired of the Blair/Brown/Labour government. No dount the tories will get back in soon, and like Obama will be left to pick up the pieces of a crippled economy. They will have to make some tough unpopular decisions to get their respectibe countries back on their feet, which could prove their downfalls in 4 to 8 years time. But that is inevitable as people will eventually get tired and want a change, and so the cycle continues.

See Dave's blog for something pretty funny about pre-election. Also see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7708238.stm for an interesting article on what all this means for the future.