Barack Obama Presidency: Hopes
Today is 01/19/2009. Tomorrow is Barack Obama's Inauguration. After that he'll start his work as the President of the United States. Hence, we have stopped collecting your fears and hopes for his presidency. We are leaving the site up so that everyone could come back to it and compare the hopes and fears people expressed with the reality of Barack Obama's office.
| Category | Hope | Name | Votes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assassination-related | He will lead a healthy long life | Crystal | 15 |
| Economy | He will somehow manage to get the banks to start lending money to each other again | 6 | |
| Economy | the economy will get better | 59 | |
| Economy | It would be really nice if he'd actually come down on the side of consumers against giant corporations, instead of continuing to help giant corporations screw consumers. But I'm not holding my breath for this one. | 4 | |
| Economy: Taxes | He will consider who he is taxing. He thinks it's the rich. But it's people who live in places like NYC, LA, Boston, San Fransisco and suburs, and those people cannot even afford to buy a house in an area with decent schools. So how are they "rich?" | 10 | |
| Economy: Taxes | He leaves taxes alone so that economy continues to prosper | 10 | |
| Education & Science | He will improve level of undergraduate education in US | 29 | |
| Education & Science | He will support governmental investments into education and science. | 41 | |
| Education & Science | He will improve the Public School system in the U.S. | 52 | |
| Education & Science | He will make it more affordable for ANYONE to get a higher education by implementing the 'corps' type programs. Learn and then serve!!! | 18 | |
| Education & Science | He will stop the ban on stem-cell research. | 63 | |
| Energy / Global Warming | He will develop alternative energies and work to combat climate change. | 78 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will go forth with his commitment to communicate with foreign "enemy" leaders. | 9 | |
| Foreign Policy | e will be very diplomatic in dealing with other World Leaders. | 20 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will restore America's standing in the world. | 83 | |
| Foreign Policy | I hope he will create peace in the whole world | 3 | |
| Foreign Policy | Improve image of the U.S. around the world | 111 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will end the doctrine of pre-emptive strike | 24 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will end our wars | 8 | |
| Foreign Policy | we'll pull our troops from Iraq | 72 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will not go forward with plans to build missile launching bases in Poland and Czech Republic | 33 | |
| Foreign Policy | He will acknowledge that our brave military has won the war in Iraq. | poon | 5 |
| Foreign Policy | He will quickly learn not to negotiate with terrorists | 9 | |
| Gay Rights | He will work toward granting gay people equal rights throughout the country, and help overturn same-sex marriage bans that already exist in several states. | 47 | |
| General | He will be the greatest and most honorable President this country has ever had. | 12 | |
| General | I think that he can unite and inspire people, both things that we need. | 7 | |
| General | Hey, here's a REALLY radical one: What if he actually KEPT his campaign promises? | 4 | |
| General | He will be a socialist! | 19 | |
| General | He's not as much of a wacky liberal like his history indicates. | 2 | |
| He is smart | I believe he is the smartest president to be elected in my over sixty years in the good old USA. I have the hope that he will preside as President with as much intelligence and savvy as he ran his campaign. | 6 | |
| He is smart | He will speak in complete sentences. | 63 | |
| He is smart | We will FINALLY hear the word 'nuclear' pronounce correctly by the US president (and Vice President - for that matter)!!! | 59 | |
| He is smart | He will be grounded in stark reality, and not in ideological delusions | 41 | |
| Healthcare | He will work to provide more people in the US with affordable healthcare. | 72 | |
| Healthcare | He will solve healthcare crisis in the US. | 50 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | I think he will seek expert opinion before acting on any issue. | 10 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | That surveys of this kind will not be necessary to give Americans the confidence that a leader will actually do what they say | 17 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will never, never make the mistake of referring to himself as "The Decider." | 19 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will keep us informed and hold press-conferences. | 21 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will be very responsible and TRUTHFUL in running our Nation. | 28 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will never escape to Crawford, Texas and "Clear Brush" when he should be in Washington doing his job. | 24 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will treat his constituents and the Constitution with respect and dignity. | 41 | |
| Honesty / Transparency / Respect | He will appoint smart, non-ideological people as his advisors (as opposed to Bush) and make decisions based on reason, not on ideology | 83 | |
| Israel-related | He will NOT put an end to supporting Israel. He will continue to deffent independence of Israeli state as he so promiced during his campaign in order to get jewish vote. | 31 | |
| Israel-related | He will not support Israel as much as many Americans would like in order to better recognize the complicated history of the land and begin to bring peace to the Middle East. | 14 | |
| Israel-related | He will put an end to supporting Israel when they are the aggresors, if they are being attacked, we can assist, but when they are the initiators, we should not feel 'obligated' anymore to support them. Even stop them if necessary. | 26 | |
| Israel-related | He will explain to people at home and abroad that democratic states (like Israel or Georgia) sometimes have to take pre-emptive action not because they are aggressors but because they are under existential threat from their immediate neighbors and because they are constantly being provoked. That said, it he will make clear that democratic and independent Israel and Georgia are in the best interests of all other democracies around the globe. | 13 | |
| National Security | He will significantly improve America's national security by (1) abolishing the policy of pre-emptive strike, (2) winning back some respect from the rest of the civilized world, and (3) ending the War in Iraq. | 1 | |
| Other | He will help those with disabilities in America | 9 | |
| Other | He will rescue a puppy from a pound | 47 | |
| Other | He will do something about the ignorance and hate polluting radio and television with garbage from Rush Limbaugh, Fox "news", Ann Coulter, etc. | 12 | |
| Other | none | 9 | |
| Partisanship | He will be bi-partisan in his Governing. | 15 | |
| Partisanship | He will do well enough that the Democratic party will retain its current advantage in popularity, rendering the GOP into irrelevance and thusly leading to the establishment of a conservative party not dominated by kooks and crooks. | 14 | |
| Partisanship | He will abandon his nonsence ideas of some socialist change used to win an election, and will create a perfectly centrist government we can all be content with. | 1 | |
| Partisanship | He will have the spine and the common sense NOT to just fall straight back into Democratic Party inside-the-Beltway business-as-usual and overcome the left-wing rhetoric of his party, to become a true centrist, instead of running to the left and setting up the pendulum for another swing to the far right in four or eight years. | 3 | |
| Race Relations | He will show this country and the world that you can be a person who is strong in his ethnicity and still succeed at the highest level. | 11 | |
| Race Relations | He will promote programs that teach tolerance and respect of all races and faiths especially in our schools | 23 | |
| Race Relations | He will abolish affirmative action | 30 | |
| Race Relations | Black people in this country will stop feeling inferior and start taking responsibility for their own lives | 56 | |
| Race Relations | He will be a role-model for thousands of (currently) disenfranchised youth in US inner-cities | 65 | |
| Race Relations | Give hope to non-white people in the U.S. and the world | 77 | |
| Race Relations | He will set good example to black men, and that blacks should strive to achieve what they thought was impossible | 58 | |
| Race Relations | He will do the best he can because it was not a mistake that he won this title. It was meant to show everyone that God has a plan and he wanted to prove it through someone not only strong and familiar with the issues but to someone who can bring the races together because he knows all sides being biracial. | 7 | |
| Race Relations | he will stop being prejudice against the white race and stop associating with people who are | 9 | |
| Religion-related | He will stem the Islamophobia in the world, not because he has Muslim ancestors, but because he believes in a just world | 4 | |
| Rule of Law | He will restore integrity to the voting process such as banning electronic voting machines without paper trails | 19 | |
| Rule of Law | He will put an end to the corruption in US politics and expose all injustices. | 23 | |
| Rule of Law | He will investigate and, if needed, convict felons, criminals, sex offenders and other law breakers from his own party, as well as the Republican Party. | 15 | |
| Rule of Law | He and Congress will launch investigations into the the illegal firings of U.S. Attorney Generals and other constitutional violations of the Bush admionistration | 18 | |
| Rule of Law | He will NOT bow down to lobbyists. | 23 | |
| Rule of Law | He will bring both Bush and Cheney up on charges of war crimes for pulling our troops into Iraq under false pretenses. | 31 | |
| Rule of Law | He will end the Bush/Cheney policy of torture; close Guantanamo | 61 | |
| State-Church | He will strive to keep church and state SEPARATE as it was always supposed to be!! This is in addition to all the other wonderful hopes shared here. gObama! | Katie | 11 |
| Supreme Court | He will appoint reasonable and thoughtful people to the Supreme Court, so the remaining right-wing ideologues will be kept in check. | 74 | |
| Trade / Globalization | He will stop US employers from exporting American jobs to the rest of the world so that American companies can make more profit, while American workers who've lost their jobs can't afford to buy the goods they used to make. | 5 | |
| Trade / Globalization | He will support the Outsourcing and stabilise the other countries Economy as well. Most of the jobs are outsourced to other countries and millions of people have it as only source of earning. We hope to improve everything. | 4 | |
| Trade / Globalization | He will allow transit of goods from Arabic countries without customs control. | 9 |