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In the case of Obama, half of the population was tricked. And lots of us weren't ignorant - only HOPEful that he wasn't a complete and utter liar.

• toyg 13y ago
  To this day, I don't think he was when he first got elected; but he did not have a real political powerbase in the party, and so didn't really make a difference when nominating members of his administration. He let the Clintonites run the show, and of course they dragged him down in the same way they've done his predecessors. He squandered his star-power in the first year (when powerful people were begging to take pictures with him) and that was it. After that, he pretty much ran things as "Clinton III & IV". In fact, Bill himself is now to Obama's left on various issues, at least going by his public statements. This is the problem with voting "the New Man who will clear up Washington": it rarely ever happens. Because the difference is made every day, inch by inch, by a political machinery built by a number of cadres, and Obama's machinery was fundamentally the same as Clinton's (and Kerry's, i.e. the people complicit in 8 years of GWB regime). In that I hoped he'd make a difference. When I saw Dean had been pushed out, I knew the gig was up. Still, even before his first day in office, at least he made a big difference in one particular field (desegregation), which was long overdue.