What if Obama falters?

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WHAT IF OBAMA FALTERS???

Barack Obamarama. Exciting, generational change, optimism on steroids, yes we can, and all that,jass.

But the what-if riffs must be heard as well. What if Obama doesn't work out?

Obama has been at the top of the class wherever he has gone. We've heard the tales, the tall praise from his teachers and peers. He has been a top politician, too, from the Illinois statehouse to Capitol Hill.

Obama ran a seminal campaign, probably a template for the next two decades and a paradigm for future generations. It didn't hurt any that he had the pathetic George Bush legacy to help blaze the trail to victory.

The what-ifs, however, have me by the scruff of my thoughts. What if the challenges are too great even for Obamarama. What if his lack of governing experience comes back to haunt; after all, that Hilary Clinton line of all he has is a good speech from whenever continues to resonate.

Or, shudder forbid, what if Obama proves to be a mirage -- a well-intentioned, super-intelligent guy who doesn't have the chops, luck, or historical timing to succeed.

What if an Obama worst case scenario occurs and he is pummeled by Congress, events, failures, an administration that turns out to be no better than the Bush Abomination?

I'm not saying it will happen.  None of us want it going down like that. I expect Obama to do great things. We need him to succeed. He must.

But history teaches us, time and again, what people want, what a world needs, sometimes doesn't quite turn out that way, often changes in ways completely unforeseen.

Which brings us to the Obama Inauguration. For the sake of argument, a reality check, what happens if the new political wave falters, fades, fails? What indeed!

Russia's so-called US expert, Igor Panarin, got a lot of pub recently for his prediction of disintegration of our states into six separate entities. The prediction appears ludicrous on its surface, especially with Panarin's added details of foreign takeovers -- East Coast to European Union, Midwest to Canada, West Coast to China -- and civil war.

Yet, an Obama failure of catastrophic proportions would set the stage for something drastic. Should Obama turn out to be a fake, or, just as bad, a Bush incompetency clone, this nation is truly done for and in apocalyptic trouble. Perhaps not enough to split into six divergent nations, but bad verging on the worst.

The economic turmoil, coupled with foreign entanglements. has created the ultimate in unstable conditions.

Not righting the economy means tens of millions of potentially starving, hopeless individuals, ultimately with nothing and nothing to lose, a preamble to anarchy.

Not navigating the shockingly difficult international issues -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the Mideast obviously; North Korea and Iran, Russia's return to prominence, China and India's rise  --  could mean nuclear confrontation and George Orwellian prediction of constant world war.

Economic collapse,  nuclear war, political dissolution are merely the known specters. That's not considering natural disasters, climate change, unforeseen dangers, all sure to happen in some form. The margin of error is small to none.

Surely, this more pessimistic rain will not spoil the Inauguration parade heralding the reign of Obama. His speech will be groundbreaking. Enthusiasm will run high. If he succeeds, we succeed. Good for us.

But it doesn't hurt to stay loose, so to speak, on this new era about to unfold. Let's not overlook the challenges while heralding the challenger for change as our salvation incarnate.

Hopefully, Obama will take care of business, fulfill our hopes, our dreams and his destiny. Hopefully.

Let's further hope we never find out what happens in an Obama failure for God forbid that Mayan December 2012 end-of-the-world prediction or permutations of the Panarin Doctrine might not be so far-fetched after all.