via Poll Finds Faith in Obama, Mixed With Patience – NYTimes.com.
President-elect Barack Obama is riding a powerful wave of optimism into the White House, with Americans confident he can turn the economy around but prepared to give him years to deal with the crush of problems he faces starting Tuesday, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
While hopes for the new president are extraordinarily high, the poll found, expectations for what Mr. Obama will actually be able to accomplish appear to have been tempered by the scale of the nation’s problems at home and abroad.
The findings suggest that Mr. Obama has achieved some success with his effort, which began with his victory speech in Chicago in November, to gird Americans for a slow economic recovery and difficult years ahead after a campaign that generated striking enthusiasm and high hopes for change.
There has never been a more synergistic President-elect than Barack Obama. At a time when we need hope, when the Bush administration has stated equivocally that they don’t care for the people and have lavished the rich, he bases his whole campaign on hope. When we all hurt and yearn for healing and hope, and even though we realize that the healing may be a long process, we get it with Barack. At a time when that bright spark of intelligence in our leadership is long overdue, he brings more of it to the table than any president in thirty years. When we crave for the best and the brightest in the White House, we get it with the Obama administration. At a time when we need someone with level-headed, straight-forward pragmatism instead of fake cowboy swagger, we get it in Barack. And above all, when we desperately need a sense of national identity instead of a policy of preemptive war, torture, and an anything goes foreign policy, Barack marches with it to the Capital steps to loudly proclaim that we are once again a nation of laws.
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