Path number 1: Obama, as demonstrated by his lovely yet cliche inaugural speech, will conform to the script given him as president of the US and will have a fairly non-revolutionary presidency, playing by the book and dealing with the issues that are presented to him in similar fashion to many of our past presidents.
Path number 2: Obama, being the wild card that he is, inspite of his cliche inagural speech, will stand out like a sore thumb, and take radically different and unorthodox stances on issues relevant to Israel and Palestine, towards Iran, China and Tibet, the economy and military industrial complex, not to mention the environment, human rights and torture, among a torrent of other issues that have been accumulating past presidencies. He will attack these issues and approach them in ways that will not make his task masters very happy, those who traditionally have held special relations with the president and have had much influence over the course of history due to their sway, oil corporations, the CIA, the Israel Lobby etc. Obama's actions and stances will make many people with special interests unhappy and he will either be assassinated (an extreme but not unheard of; JFK as he attempted to reform the CIA from the inside out), or his presidency will be brought under a cloud and will take a turn for the worse (like Jimmy Carter's presidency).
Path number 3: Obama, having the touch of genius that I believe he may possess (as demonstrated by how he handled his campaign) will publicly play the part of the president as the role has been already written for him, but will subtly be pushing forward with progressive and revolutionary change, unbeknownst to the public. The key word here being SUBTLE. He will address these issues indirectly, under the cover of being a role-model president. He will play the game of the politician to the fullest, by approaching these issues from the back door. For instance, if Obama were to propose a bill that would only promise international aid to countries who's borders were recognized by the US and the UN, this would make foreign aid to countries like... oh I don't know... Israel would be ineligible for the receipt of aid from the US (due to it's lack of definitive borders)... without the US, that boat would sink pretty quickly. Now, this is a fairly obvious political maneuver that wouldn't work at all (I just thought it up) but demonstrates the kind of political angling I'm talking about. Obama is going to have to be shady if he wants to support the causes that wouldn't float with the special interests in the higher tiers of the US government. This path supposes that Obama is legitimately for progressive change and knows how to play the game as well. While Obama has voiced his support for Israel time and again, let's not forget that his former pastor (Reverend Wright) is pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli... who knows what could be going through Obama's head. To sum it up, this path will require Obama to play the political game, all the while, his real motives are concealed.Now, these are by no means the only paths available to Obama, but they are overarching directions and trends his presidency may take on. Some may say I'm overanalyzing, others may say I'm not giving Obama enough credit while others still, will say I'm giving the man too much credit.
Well I say that it doesn't matter what you say cuz regardless of what anyone says, the final say can only be said after the fact.
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