Reading The Next President: Mastering a Daunting Agenda gave me a quick overview of the most important national and international issues facing our nation today, an overview I much needed. It was helpful to read almost a laundry list of the “daunting agenda” we are facing as a nation for the years to come. Richard Holbrooke did not, however, attempt to disguise his loyalty to Senator Obama. Holbrooke is quite persuasive in his article—writing as if there is no other way of considering the problems that the next president of the United States will face and the solutions he will have to form. This gave me a good idea of what Senator Obama would do, or at least what he says he would do, with international situations such as the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq and the battle against global warming, as well as with the economic problems of the United States, however it offered very few equal examples of how McCain would really handle the situations.

Holbrooke did an almost equal job in almost bashing McCain as he did in praising Obama, including little details such as McCain’s gruesome “bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran” jingle once said at a public rally. Really, if this were the only article I were exposed to before voting in November, I would vote for Obama, hands down. Holbrooke’s biased opinion makes Obama seem like a hero—McCain the war-loving, vicious antagonist in the United State’s twisted story of the year 2008. I would like to read an article equally as biased towards McCain and then another that avoids obvious bias altogether on the same topics that Holbrooke discusses.

Although the bias sometimes bothered me, I enjoyed reading about some of Obama’s actual plans for these crises. All throughout his campaign I have heard Obama preached about the Change he would bring to our nation, and, in turn, the world. However, I have rarely heard detailed descriptions of how he would go about solving all of these problems. This article was clear and concise about what some of Senator Obama’s plans are if he were to win the 2008 election.