I DON'T ENVY BARACK OBAMA.............

When Barack Obama finally sits down behind his desk in the Oval Office, he will be facing and handling some of the greatest challenges that any American president has had to take on since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

It is quite obvious that America is in a crisis. As a matter of fact, it is in several crises, and the job and responsibilities of being the President of the United States are tougher and more difficult than they ever have been for a long, long time.

I am not going to get into the whys and hows and whos that got this country in such a mess. While President George Bush may deserve some of the blame, I know that he is not entirely responsible for the chaotic state that we find our country in today.

What I want to focus on is the incredible weight that will soon be placed upon the shoulders of Barack Obama and the unimaginable difficulty of the overwhelming tasks before him.

In my opinion, when Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, it will be like F.D.R. taking on the Great Depression. It will be like Abraham Lincoln taking on the Civil War. It will be like General Dwight D. Eisenhower taking on the beaches of Normandy.

I certainly do not envy Obama, nor do I understand why anyone in their right mind would ever actually want the job of being the President of this country.
Especially now.

While I obviously do not approve or agree with the voting majority of this country in regards to their choice of who should lead this nation; now that we are stuck with that choice, I am ready to begin feeling empathy for President Obama's situation and I am at the early stages of what could be desribed as "being on his side" in many of the matters that he will soon need to contend with.

As President, he will be inheriting a unpopular war and a worldwide economic situation that he only had a very tiny part in creating. He will be contending with a national unemployment rate of almost 7 percent and he will be dealing with the very real possibilities of another financial collapse and the bankrupcies of this country's major automobile makers.

Added to all of this, he will be trying to find some way to bring an end to, or, at least, diminish this country's role and involvement in the war in Iraq. While, at the same time, trying to not only salvage, but actually bolster and restore America's floundering image in the eyes of the world community.

This task alone will need to be herculean.

While I do not personally like the idea of Barack Obama being president, I am far from being totally unreasonable about it. When I take the time to survey and comprehend all that is on his plate as president, it is not a difficult thing for my attitude towards him to change and for me to find myself feeling some of his pain.

Those of you who have liked him and supported him from the beginning need to understand that it is a very difficult road to walk down when a person decides to begin to accept and embrace something that they formerly were dead set against.

If you all are willing to give me the time that I need to walk down that road, you may just find me coming over more and more to your way of seeing things. In this article, you can at least see me taking my first baby steps in accomplishing that. But, it is not going to happen overnight.

The fact that I am beginning to open my eyes a little, however, should mean at least something to those of you who have seen all this and understood it all along...........