I'm skeptical too obviously, but at this point, this country has been so mismanaged, we are all praying for any glimmer of hope. And frankly, while being an American abroad has always been a bit embarrassing, as I think the rest of the world has always (and probably with reason) stereotyped us as uncultured oafs, it is now just humiliating and horrifying, thinking of our foreign policy, etc etc.

But at this point, the country and the economy are in such bad shape, domestic policy is going to make a huge difference. I don't know if the president really has that much of an effect on that stuff; domestic policy is shaped in many ways by local government, but civil liberties & social change (lgbt issues, abortion, environment etc) come from national policy, and we need those back; also, I think the choice of president signals the temperature of the nation, and america so far has just been proving that it is too stupid to know when it's being screwed, and that is utterly disheartening.

short answer, yeah. I totally agree. we need obama to win regardless, but the journey has in so many ways been a depressing one.