EEE said:

"But what is really, really scary to me is what seems to happen when the potential, once in a lifetime great leader starts to emerge: they either hugely disappoint us, or some asshole like a Ray or Oswald steps out of the corner and squashes our hope and removes our optimism."

The antidote is to not trust in the "great man" theory of governance. I see folks doing that all the time in Latin America. Everyone wants (yearns for, even) the one great messianic leader who will change everything and make their lives better. The reality is that any errors made by the Bush administration will fade over time. Some things will get better, others will get worse.

I think you are making a mistake putting such faith and optimism in any one person. Real changes in America or anywhere else are more a slow evolution of thought and action, carried out by millions of folks.

Would it be good to have a leader who would better balance the concerns of regular folks against corporations? Sure. But remember that even those corporations are made up of the same regular folks whose futures are tied up in the success of the corporations. And via the magic of 401k's, they are part owners as well.

And what's the alternative? More state ownership of assets? We all know (and history has well shown) that top-down planned economies do not work.

I am intrigued at what an Obama presidency would mean for America. It would certainly be a generational change, and it would make any further non-white, non-male presidencies less contentious. It would help "legitimize" the millions of polyglot children in the country, including my own Latin/British/German blends.

I don't think he's right to espouse an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, and perhaps his position will evolve. But I respect him being right about not supporting the invasion in the first place. I'm not worried about him constructing an elaborate socialist society in America as the congress will still be too divided to make too many new taxes possible. Oddly, Huckabee's proposal to move to purely value-added sales taxes seems interesting, and much harder for the rich to corrupt.