[JohnP]

Personally I don't think either candidate is that great.
Obama says what his writers and staff tell him to say in order to get him elected. He has an entire staff whose only job is making him look and sound good in the correct light. Which is why, IMHO the man does very well at rehearsed speeches, but not so well at off-the-cuff work. His opponent is played in the media to be a feeble old man, about to die, which is also misguided.
The part that bothers me most, is that for many of the topics I care about, the candidates are exactly the same only with a different political party attached to their titles.
I know also that many hate the current US president, but I also wonder how much of this is because of the truth and how much of this is because of the blatantly one-sided coverage aimed at him in the past couple years by the US media, who, to be honest, have lost all credibility at being balanced, and are essentially an engine of the democratic party. If anything is done that can be perceived as a blunder, it airs for months and months and months, with each opportunity being taken to make sure the whole world knows this occurred under Pres. Bush's watch-the implication being, if a democrat were president, the world would be a better place. Perhaps it's just circumstancial but to me it is interesting that former Pres. Clinton could bomb the @#$ out of Belgrade and other areas conveniently when a certain dress was aired, and he was loved as a savior of the Kosovar people, preventing "evil Serbs" from their "ethnic cleansing". Now, I honestly don't know what happened or didn't happen in Serbia or Croatia and the like, but there were all sorts of claims of mass graves and such, which didn't pan out. In another instance, a medicine factory or some such was bombed with cruise missiles. A warlord essentially a gang leader intimidated the administration into withdrawing troops with the deaths of just a few soldiers. No wonder OBL felt we were harmless at the time. Contrast this to coverage of the current president in Iraq. One of OBL's money trails led straight to Iraqi intelligence (although admittedly not all of them did) Iraq had lots and lots of yellow cake Uranium and not a single power generating reactor, and certain areas were deemed "off limits" to UN inspectors prior to the invasion. So, of course, they didn't find anything in the places they were allowed to look. This has since been morphed somehow from "UN inspectors didn't find anything" to "Bush lied-or invented the whole thing". Mass graves have indeed been found in Iraq, mostly old ones, but there all the same, and people were stepping over each other in the beginning to point out officials who had made their entire families disappear. Yet, Pres. Bush is not a democrat, he is a republican. Election years being what they are, efforts have been called "Bush's vietnam" "unwinnable war" Marines have been called murderers by high ranking democrat officials before even the evidence was looked at (they've since been tried and exonnerated, btw) not because it was true, but because they felt that by making America look bad under a republican president, they in turn would look good. We all know this is flawed logic, but unless people dig deeper than the surface, it works. Tragically, most Americans aren't interested in digging, and Europeans, who would have to dig even deeper still (hey, if our OWN networks are saying it it MUST be true...) if they want to know the truth. So, rather than make Americans hate the republican party, the net effect has been to make EVERYONE hate America. Great job, guys.
I think both political parties in the US have been hijacked, the democrats by people even the Soviet Union would have considered too extreme on the left, and the Republicans by globalists who cow to anything that will help their standing in the international groups they seek to appease.
It's all a shame and a sham at the same time.
Just my thoughts, anyway.

Obama is a great orator-and projects himself well. Unfortunately, as has been proven in the past, such does not make a good leader. His speeches often contradict each other and almost always agree with whatever his advisors say is popular with his current audience. A polished liar is still a liar. From what i"ve seen of McCain, it is apparent to me that globalists and others have taken over perhaps both parties. Otherwise there were a few candidates I would much rather support who perhaps, were quietly asked to bow out. Waiting one's "turn" has no place in America IMHO if one happens to be who the people want. I believe the parties have overextended their usefulness and are now contributing to a lack of leadership choices here, because each party knows it has at least a 50% chance of having it in the bag, regardless of whether they truly represent their constituents once elected.
Sorry, I'm rambling (it's what I do best, apparently) again.
Back to you Europeans and what you thought of Mr. Obama's speech delivery.

John P.