OBAMA: Proud of our president

My first knowledge of our president came when, by chance, I tuned into the 2004 Democratic convention being held in Boston. I remember no details except the nomination of John Kerry as the presidential candidate and the keynote address given by a young black man with the strange name of Barack Obama. That speech and the strength of its delivery alerted me to feel that we would hear much more from him in the future.

The last previous Democratic presidential candidate that I had voted for was Harry Truman in 1948 and have remained a mostly Republican voter over the years up to the first George W. Bush administration. With the misfortunes of the Bush first term, I voted for Kerry in 2004. With the emergence of Obama as a serious challenging candidate in 2008, I listened, voted and have closely watched the results. In my opinion he has proven to be very intelligent by selecting good people as staff and advisers, listening to them carefully and then making deliberate decisions.

He inherited a mess - two wars, a cascading economy and a steadily growing national debt. Probably not every corrective measure he has taken has worked as intended. Mistakes have probably been made by the expensive wars are finally winding down with partial success. It is hoped that now the professional politicians in both parties can cooperate sufficiently to balance the budget and start debt reduction in a sensible way that does not damage the still wounded economy more. If adjustment of taxes needs to be part of the plan, so be it.

I believe that the president has been a good spokesman and an ambassador of goodwill to the world for the USA. He is generally liked worldwide and hopefully can increasingly help generate cooperative world action on needed global actions. On the other hand he has decisively shown courage when secrecy and dangerous unilateral action was felt necessary. Assassination of leaders and interrogation torture as weapons of war bother me somewhat, but perhaps the argument that they save lives is valid. Our president is a gifted communicator, tireless leader, decisive adjudicator, model father and had the strength amid it all to quit smoking!

REED OLSON

Coeur d'Alene