Welcome to New Blog

I was reading some Alan Jacobs last night and he talked about blogs having a season and then needing to change and that really resonated with me. I am planning some bigger changes in the future, but for now I at least wanted to get away from the "defending Obama" theme, not because I have changed my overall position on his presidency, but more because I feel the political climate has changed in the last year. I started the Defending Obama blog shortly after the midterm elections. At that time I felt like I really needed a space to express my frustration with the ridiculous rhetoric coming at Obama over health care, his birth certificate, his supposed "otherness", his so-called socialism, etc. I felt that his legitimacy was threatened and I felt jarred by that and frankly sick of seeing it happen without at least getting in my two cents. And I have really enjoyed the theme. It has helped me get back into writing and find my voice. Readers responded with over 5,000 page views during the life of the web. But now is a different time in the life of this administration and in my life and I want to shift the focus. Of course the archives remain at the old blog site, www.defendingobama.blogspot.com, and I will continue to link to them there as appropriate.

While there are still plenty of absurd attacks on Obama, the level of the debate has risen--in part because of the shift towards deficit reduction, in part because the Arab Spring has made foreign policy more prominent, and in part because the 2012 election is approaching. In addition, the level of my writing has shifted--I am doing more and more magazine writing, and hoping to contribute at other blogs. These factors have me wanting to change the focus to analyzing the broader discussion of the global common good and America's role in promoting it at home and abroad. So expect to see a continued focus on national politics in the Age of Obama, but expect the discussion be more open-ended, because the nature of the issues that are front and center are to me more open-ended. You will still see a strong pro-Obama bias, but I will try to give more attention to the increasingly credible questions being raised across the political and ideological spectrum. Thanks for reading and please continue to give me your feedback here at the site, at twitter @rockmetzger , by email or on Facebook (Greg Metzger).