Obama Cairo speech June 2009

Well… here I go again. Just as when Obama was elected, I am inspired by our President. I just listened to his speech in Cairo, on Thursday 6.4.09.
And I want to make these comments before I see all of the mixed reviews, as I tend to compromise my positions with other people’s opinions.
(And in full disclosure I do not vote along party lines, and sometimes I do not vote with full knowledge of the candidate’s history. In 2000 I voted for ’43. And in 2004, although I don’t think that ’43 had a strong competitor, I voted for that competitor. And in 2008 I voted for Obama, having followed him for a fairly significant period of time, including getting a sense of how he actually acts as a politician; as was demonstrated by his actions as President of the Harvard Law Review. Some of this information I obtained via the New Yorker and a number of other publications, and communications with people who knew him personally. He was described by one of his advisors, a friend of mine, as other worldly)
Let me go back to my dialogue.
I do think he is somewhat other worldly in the respect that he speaks for values that we hold here in America, and the ideals upon which this country was founded. Ideals that he feels are “human rights” for all people. He speaks with emotional and intelligent commitment. Underneath that I fully understand, by his past behavior that his political actions are based on reality and practicality.
Like my first post, my view of the conditions in this country and the world was lifted by his talk. His vision of fighting extremist (of any religion) and protecting the US; his discussion of Iran; his discussion of nuclear proliferation; of the Palestine/Israel two state solution; and his discussion about women’s right to education, etc, I thought proudly reflect our country’s true position , or at least mine.
That being said, I fully expect that what he said may by an asymptotic dream, but then if one does not have goals, progress will be very, very slow. Nor will it be focused. It will be lucky not to be chaotic.
I thought that his speech had an undercurrent of practicality in that he, like many of our better past president’s reached out to a broad audience (in this case the world) and engaged them. I think the goal is to have them put implicit (and maybe explicit) pressure on some of those factions that he is addressing (pressure on extremist by moderates, pressure on Israel to re engage on the two state solution and Palestine to reduce violence, etc, etc.
Soooo…
I am glad that he is representing our country to the world, and even happier that he is representing human and world values that are appropriate to any individual.
Well, that’s it for now…oh, I did listen to some feedback before finishing this on PBS, and one comment that I agree with is that, yes, his vision still needs details and action and behavioral validation. He needs to tap in on a lot of political capital… which, at this point, seems somewhat unlimited… buy will probably run out of it…sometime..maybe.
(I guess I am not quite done…)_
But, speaking of behavior, he and his administration have, even before inauguration, laid out vision without much detail… received negative reviews subsequently, only to fairly quickly flush out details and implement them with alacrity. And at this point they seem to be having some positive effects.
He has been less than 6 months since he has been president. He and his administration have addressed economic worldwide disaster (with associated industry failures and job losses), two wars, very negative worldwide opinion, Supreme Court justice nominations, etc etc.
So, I will continue to be patient and enjoy the validation of my idealism by President Obama.