This Made Me Cry

Why I will be voting for the incumbant.

"In an effort to cool the situation down, it didn't come from me, it didn't come from Secretary Clinton. It came from people on the ground who are potentially in danger," Obama said. "And my tendency is to cut folks a little bit of slack when they're in that circumstance, rather than try to question their judgment from the comfort of a campaign office." [Here]

Between living in the Republican South, and wishing to keep peace with a beloved  member of my family, I learned to temper my approval.  Here on my blog that no one reads, allow me to say, "I love our President." 

 And from the Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis:

 That evening he sat down at his desk in the White House residence, in the Treaty Room, and pulled out a yellow legal pad and a No. 2 ­ ­pencil. When we think of a presidential speech we think of the bully pulpit—the president trying to persuade the rest of us to think or feel in a certain way. We do not think of the president sitting down and trying to persuade himself to think or feel a certain way first. But Obama does—he subjects himself to a kind of inner bully pulpit.

Actually, he didn’t toss his speechwriters’ work in the garbage can, not right away. Instead he copied it out, their entire 40-minute speech. “It helped organize my thoughts,” he says. “What I had to do is describe a notion of a just war. But also acknowledge that the very notion of a just war can lead you into some dark places. And so you can’t be complacent in labeling something just. You need to constantly ask yourself questions.” He finished around five in the morning. “There are times when I feel like I’ve grabbed onto the truth of something and I’m just hanging on,” he says. “And my best speeches are when I know what I’m saying is true in a fundamental way. People find their strength in different places. That’s where I’m strong.”

A few hours later he handed his speechwriters six sheets of yellow paper filled with his small, tidy script. In receiving a prize for peace, speaking to an audience primed for pacifism, he’d made the case for war. When the president handed him this speech, Rhodes had two reactions. The first was that there is no obvious political upside to it....

 This image of the president, alone, in time he could be sleeping, figuring out what he thinks and believes.  Its been awhile since I've seen someone like that in a position of power.  Not the people I work for, not the people I vote for.  I have a lot of respect for that.