Every Presidential election cycle brings its list of issues that this or that candidate pounds away at in the hopes that one or two of them might propel them into the Oval office. This 2008 Presidential election campaign is more than just interesting, it is down right amazing. I look at the polls, I watch the appropriate cable news to hear what the candidates are telling their crowds and I absorb. Some cycles I come to some astounding conclusion and then decide I am way off base and go back to sleep. Not in 2008!
I leave it to the reader to come to their own conclusions, but I suspect that some major changes are happening in the United States and I believe they are going to have major import for the future of this country. I do want to point out that I am looking at these issues, irrespective of the MESSENGER, the political party or the methods being used to get the media to report them.
1. The latest polls show that about 60+% of Americans want out of the war in Iraq and want out of any future wars with Iran, North Korea or anywhere else. I don't see this attitude as passivism or isolationism but more the historic American attitude that Thomas Jefferson expounded so well, "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none!" Americans are tired of worrying about obscure locations around the world that most of them can't identify on a map. It is a replay of the anti-interventionist attitudes of the late 1930's.
2. Every time Barack Obama makes a speech to a crowd anywhere he gets a major positive reaction when he talks about getting out of NAFTA. To make matters worse the polls show that 66% of Americans not only reject NAFTA but as Ron Paul's campaign has suggested, want nothing to do with a major NAFTA highway running across the USA.
3. During the Republican Primary the big crowd pleaser was the "I'm going to protect the US borders from illegals" comment. Polls show that almost 70% of Americans want both illegal immigration and legal immigration to come to an END, PERIOD! Anytime amnesty comes up in the US Senate, hundreds of thousands of letters, e-mails and angry phone calls put an end to that legislation. Liberal Democrats were stunned the last time the bill came up, UNIONS were hotly opposed to it and threatened the Democratic leadership.
4. Americans are worried about the future and against any more jobs being exported to China or anywhere else. This is underscored by the current trend amongst American consumers to avoid the purchase of items made in China. Since 2001 some 3.5 million jobs in manufacturing have gone abroad and Americans know it and DON'T LIKE IT! It's part of the problems that show up when some 66% of Americans say the nation and its economy is HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.

I would not be surprised if a form of Smoot-Hawley was enacted in the next Congress. I would not be shocked to see an America First movement begin in the next few years. I wonder if a big dose of anti-immigration legislation is on its way passed by nativists in Congress.
I wonder if perhaps we should all consider a return to isolationism, protectionism and nativism. It might mean an end of financing everything we do by printing T bills and selling them to our oil producers, the folks that make our new HD TV's, our autos and loan us money for our subprime mortgages.
What do you think?