An unshakable man, an unshakable president.

Barack Obama represents the America that I want to live in and be a part of.

Though I have to say, at the beginning of the dem’s convention, I didn’t care much for it. The Media was over-exaggerating everything. The small group of Hillary fanatics were making a small uproar that the media jumped all over to make a story. It was all emotion and no rationality, but all that changed when Obama took the stage for his speech.

Speeches smeeches, you may say. It is all rhetoric! Well, yes. Isn’t it always? When is anything a politician said guaranteed? I mean, let’s take McCain. How do you know that McCain will do anything he says? You don’t! So what makes that different from Obama? So, if you are going to go with rhetoric, go with the one that makes the most sense, the one that has the most logic behind it.

McCain says he will help with our oil crisis by drilling off our coast. That is rhetoric. But, the difference is it’s more than rhetoric; it’s also a lie. How about when John McCain says that he is for change? That is rhetoric. But, is he really? Well, for the past 8 years, he has voted over 90% of the time with George W. Bush. That is the 44% of the time he chose to show up to vote. I could go on, but I hope you get the point.

Now, Obama has rhetoric as well, but I can’t find much that would make me think it’s anything less than true convictions. I guess my only complaint would be his FISA ruling. That does turn my stomach, but I am not going to agree with 100% of what the man does, nor do I expect to. He says he is a man of change, and so far, he is. He says he has presidential judgement, and he has had great judgement. He says he is for common sense politics, and so far, he has done a great job of keeping his politics simple and logical.

Yet, do all those things make one presidential? No, although it is a great start. Here is where I would like to talk a little about the nuanced side of my opinion/judgement of Barack Obama. Unfortunately, this is something that has never been discussed, written or even muttered outside of my own head. What about his ability to be listened to? This is huge. How affective can a president be when no one wants to listen to him? Well, you get George Bush when he tries to address the nation. His ability to excite and unify is unheard of since JFK? Or, even more nuanced, how about his ability to stay calm and “laser-focused” during a seemingly impossible scenarios?

Let me give you some examples. During his foreign tour in the Middle East and Europe, he stopped in Kuwait to give a small speech. During this time he was talked into attempting a three-pointer. Now, one has to remember that he has the Media following him and watching his every move, republicans just salivating at the chance of him making a slip and a nice little crowd of people hollering for him and without even breaking a sweat, the man shots a nearly perfect shot ON HIS FIRST ATTEMPT. Talk about keeping your cool under pressure?

After he was attacked by Hillary and her people, McCain and his people and pretty much every other white conservative, Barack Obama makes a earth shattering speech about racism in America. His cool, calm and focused speech opened up the nation to begin a dialogue about race, and its impact on culture and African-American attitudes in the media. I have considered that speech as my generation’s MLK speech.

Now, I come to the purpose of this article, his Democratic Convention speech. Talk about pressure! He had a stadium full of people (84,000 people, I think) waiting to see him, 39 million TV viewers wanting to watch and of course McCain and his people just waiting for the smallest hiccup to pounce on. So, what does Obama do? He delivers his best speech yet. It was so phenomenal that political conservatives are calling it one of the greatest political speeches of their time. Throughout the whole speech, he was calm, collected and keeped that laser-focus. But not only that, he spoke to the people, he motivated them, unified them, energized them and them made the point that this was not about him, but about all of us. Remind you of JFK’s speech?

Now, this is who we want with his finger on the “red-button”. This is who we want having a strong political discourse with dangerous foreign nations. This is a person we want rallying the nation behind national agendas. There are polls that say over 80% of Europeans want Barack Obama as the next American President. Don’t you think that says something? Maybe we are too emotionally and personally vested in our own problems to see what is really there. A man that is everything we need in our next president. A man that can turn America into the great nation it used to be.

Before I end this article, I would like to mention one last thing … Under much pressure, from all sides, Obama chooses Biden as his running mate. Obama chooses someone that is not a “yes man”, someone that has more years of experience and someone that is quite different from himself. That tells me that Obama knows how to surround himself with smarter, more experienced people. That is always your best judge of character; who one surrounds themselves with speaks volumes about how confident and comfortable he is with himself, weaknesses and all.

So let us look at McCain’s VP pick. The Alaskan governor with less than two years experience at big politics. Before her governorship, she was mayor of a 9,000 pop. city. Before that she was a PTA leader. She is less experienced, less knowledgable and she seems likely to be a “yes woman” for McCain. So, there you go. It seems McCain looked over many of the sharpest minds and the ones with the most experience for a pretty face with extreme conservative views. Is he afraid of smarter more successful people? Would he be intimidated by Romney? Now, that is a little scary. A man known to be a hot head, one that is more fight the talk, a man that doesn’t bother to show up to his job 66% of the time with no one to balance him out, no one to keep him on the straight and narrow and no one to challenge him when he is wrong. That’s not presidential, that’s cowardly.

With all that being said, that is why I believe Barack Obama is “Truly Presidential”.