Does charisma help a president? Yes. Charisma helped presidents like Kennedy and Reagan, who put it good use (though I don't agree with Reagan's policies). Charisma also helped presidents who abuse it, like George W. Bush, who has used his charisma to get thousands of Americans killed in two wars, inspire the entire world to hate America, and drive the economy into a credit sinkhole. The criticism against Obama regarding his charisma has denigrated him as nothing more than a law professor who can speak a good speech but has no experience in foreign policy. Excuse me, but the whole world loves Obama. His charisma is already turning the world's hatred for America into love. When he was in Europe, he got the Germans wishing they were African-American, at least for a day. I think we'll be hearing a lot more rap and hip-hop in German in the near future. Candidates in Brazilian elections are renaming themselves, "Obama." Can they do that? Who cares. Barack Obama is his own foreign policy. Once Obama becomes president, the world will come back on our side. McCain, on the other hand, wants to bomb Iran. He talks about all the Middle Eastern countries he's visited, but I actually lived in the Middle East. The apartment I lived in was down the street from an Iranian high school in Ankara, Turkey. Yet, I never met a Middle Eastern person I wanted to bomb. Even though it was necessary to go after the Taliban, I'm not willing to bomb Iran just because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says crazy things. McCain can't even pronounce, "Ahmadinejad!" I have a Persian American friend who tells me that everyone in Iran likes America and is fed up with their own insane government. (Watch Persepolis and you'll get a clue about the Persians.) McCain has tried to brand himself as a maverick, but that's really just a way for him to put a spin on the fact that he's a flip-flopping political opportunist who uses political theatre to draw attention to himself. McCain tried to one-up Obama last week by allegedly suspending his campaign and air-dropping himself into the bailout negotiations, as if to say, "Here I am to save the day!", but yesterday his buddies in the House of Reps sent the bailout down the toilet ... and now McCain blames Obama! What the hell??? McCain might be better off bailing Sarah Palin out of interviews that give away the limits of her brain power. As Mr. McAllister recently predicted, Palin has become a rock around old man McCain's neck. Even conservative Republicans like George Will are saying the same thing. And now that McCain's theatrics have only proven his ignorance about the economy, Americans are started to wise up about which candidate will get us out of this mess: Barack Obama.
