Hey, c'mon! Bill Clinton was kind of fun at times, wasn't he, Bobert? ;-)

A great many people saw Obama as a virtual Messiah around the time he was elected...and not just in the USA either. Matter of fact, he was much more popular outside the USA than he was inside the USA, and I think that is still the case. There were many people both inside and outside the USA who saw him as a saviour who would bring in enormous changes for the better. As Bobert indicated, this had much to do with the general relief felt across the world at the thought that the Bush administration was finally over after 8 mind-numbingly awful years...

On the international scene I think it was only the Israelis who were hoping McCain would get elected. They figured he was as bloodthirsty as they are, but they weren't at all sure about Obama.

I've never before seen a presidential candidate who stirred such immense hopes in people's hearts as Obama did in late 2008. It was quite something to witness at the time, and I felt some of those hopes pretty strongly myself...tempered with the awareness that it probably wouldn't work out quite that well. I already knew he was committed to fighting on in Afghanistan, and that did not bode well for the future as far as I was concerned.