Should I vote for Barack Obama?

I listened to Presidential hopeful Barack Obama address the nation this past Tuesday with his eloquent history lesson beginning at the penning of the Constitution through the many civil rights advances and its many problems. The man is very much a public speaker, at least as long as he sticks to his prepared material. He talks so well that almost nothing he says can be contested. I have the transcript on my desk as I write this column and have read and re-read it. It's a very good speech, maybe one of the greatest speeches of our day.

Although interesting and fluent, it's not necessary for Barack Obama to give me a 30-minute history lesson on race-relations in this country to win my vote. What I do need as a voter is his assurance that everyone under his future administration is going to get a far shake and that 20 years of the "most segregated moment in American life occurs on Sunday morning" is not ingrained in his subconscious mind. If John McCain had a 20-year history of sitting under the Pastor Wright's opposite and then told the world that he believed in racial healing, everyone would openly reject him. Heckfire, Hillary wouldn't even go there.

Mr. Obama's charismatic delivery is somehow wasted on me, as I have an inbuilt spam-filter when it comes to what I perceive to be possibly smoke and mirrors. Flowery speeches promising vague returns defined as "change" doesn't make me salivate. I simply want line item yes' and no's. I want to see a voting record that has more than "present" in the little boxes. Mr. Obama is either in excess on one count or sadly lacking on the other.

At least with Hillary Clinton we have 15 years of hard evidence to go by if she is our choice, but Mr. Obama is a mirage of sorts. He promises. He points out old seemingly difficult to change problems and promises to fix them. Somehow. Even though his problem-fixing promises are weak and there is no record of his past successes, he has plenty of followers ready to believe him.

About 20 years ago I attended a large gathering of non-denominational basically Christian people in Houston for a Bill Gothard seminar on Basic Life. We were seated in a large auditorium with what appeared to be a thousand or more people and before us was a stage with a giant two-section curtain. Everyone rose to his or her feet as the curtain opened and a projected image of Bill Gothard appeared to be walking onto the stage. A thunderous applause greeted him from the crowd around me.

Much to my wife's dismay, I did not follow suit, but remained seated and did not clap my hands. I looked around and folks were smiling and clapping and anxiously awaiting the night's presentation. Interspersed were others, like myself, who simply would not partake of greeting something that only appeared to be real, but simply put, was a mirage. There is a term for this kind of crowd mentality and it comes from the saying "like sheep to the slaughter". It's "Sheeple" or sheep-people. I saw this same behavior at an Obama speech when he sneezed and his audience of supporters cheered with giddy abandonment.

Now, don't get me wrong, Bill Gothard does indeed teach sound basic life principles, most of which embrace level-headed decision making, but fail to address everyday problems we encounter and I had no problem sitting and listening to his teaching, albeit by virtual proxy. What I did find disturbing was how easily his image and just his image moved people. I also walked away from his seminar with no clear idea of how to implement his teaching into every day life.

Mr. Obama's cultured appearance and incredible speaking ability hyper-boosts him as he exposes old difficult problems, but only hints of solutions. His description of black and white angst over race issues is dead-on, but can he actually change anything? Will his holding the Oval Office make racial unity possible? His followers think so.

Will his admission that Washington is riddled with insider back-scratching and corruption change in his administration? Can he fix it? What is his plan? If we dismantle our Army in Iraq and bring them home, what will we do with all these troops and the war machine? How will surrendering the Middle East make us stronger? I'm afraid Mr. Obama's plan will simply return us to Bill Clinton's day of a weakened military through sweeping military budget cuts, raised taxes and make matters worse.

Finally, the coup de grace for me in deciding if Mr. Obama is "The Candidate" is by listening to France and Germany. Who is Europe supporting for our leader? According to a European based poll of five major countries, Hillary Clinton was the favorite by 43%, while Barack Obama was only able to garner 11%. The Europeans who are our competitors and want their share of the pie (rather the whole pie) gave John McCain a 1% vote. That settles it for me.

What I see in this poll is they think Hillary Clinton will compromise, like her husband did. They are unsure of Barack Obama, because they have no idea what he plans to do and John McCain? John McCain will continue doing what America needs, even if it means putting America first. They fear him.

I personally am not interested one iota what the Europeans think if it means compromising the American way of life.