Just when you thought that there couldn’t possibly be any more predictions about the election’s outcome and repercussions, here’s one more: When the novelty of a young black man in the White House wears off, there will be nothing left but bad politics.
And don’t even think of calling me a racist. He could be purple for all I care. It’s still just bad politics.
It’s kind of like a new toy. You went into the fancy electronics store and saw this really shiny new toy, and you decided you had to have it. So you saved and saved for months until you could get it. The day finally rolls around when you can get the toy, and by this point you’ve put this toy up on a kind of pedestal of sorts. You have been telling yourself for
months how great this toy is going to be and cannot imagine it being anything other than the best toy you have ever bought. So anyway, you finally buy the toy and take it home.
Fast forward to when you walk by the toy that you haven’t used since the day you brought it home (because it didn’t exactly work as advertised on the box), and you come to the unfortunate realization that the toy was not as cool as you thought it was before you had it. In fact, the toy kind of sucks – and yet it’s too late. You can no longer return the toy. You’re stuck with it.
This is called buyer’s remorse, and I predict that a year in the future, once the name Obama is no longer synonymous with empty rhetoric (i.e. “change we need”) but rather with socialist policies, masses of Americans won’t be singing his praises quite so vehemently. So what effect will this have?
Well, for one thing FOX News, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh’s ratings will go through the roof, and the ratings of MSNBC, CNN and NBC will plummet. Who’s going to tune in on a Tuesday night to watch Wolf Blitzer talk about how great of a job Obama’s doing a year from now?
Sure, they’ll get away with that for a few months during the so-called “honeymoon period,” but after that people are going to want scandal and fiery, passionate political reporting that even the silver fox Anderson Cooper couldn’t bring himself deliver.
And what are the Keith Olbermanns, Bill Mahers and Jon Stewarts of the world going to do a couple years from now? I mean, there’s only so long they can make fun of the fact that Bush really doesn’t have much of a future on the lecture circuit before that’s just not funny anymore. Then what?
So thank you for contributing to the financial success of the conservatives over at FOX and screwing over “The Daily Show.” I’m sure that’s not what you meant to do in voting for Barack. I’m content in my ignorant notion that you didn’t really mean to vote for him anyway, but rather vote against Bush. Congratulations on successfully doing that, by the way. A job well done. Democracy hard at work. Here’s hoping that your wealth is the first to be redistributed.
The writer is a sophomore majoring in political science.
