Personally, I don't think the man likes the United States at all. I think he is like a significant percentage of the Democratic left that thinks the US is fundamentally flawed and wants to "Change" it to reflect the values they think it should have.Isn't that a good thing? I'm not too sure about McCain's politics, but if he's much of a conservative the American people will have a choice between changing and staying much the same. Which way they vote (if they bother at all) will be an object lesson in how Americans feel about the way the country is being run.Assuming, of course, that it becomes obvious Obama is out to change the US - his campaign of hope, flowers, sunshine and change is fairly unsubtle, but there's no underestimating the capacity of news services to reinterpret the obvious.Edit: I'm working of course on the assumption that he does want to make fundamental changes. Most previous elections have candidates who position themselves differently but hold all the same core values - their differences, as they exist, have been on the peripheries, such as gay marriage/abortions/aggressive words/etc.Generally core positions on rights, the military, US supremacy and expanding presidential authority are similar or identical.
Most of the Democratic base does not like the way the United States is *run*. (The party base, as we all know, are those that participate in the day-to-day operations of the party at the grass-roots level and also are usually the majority of voters in off-year elections.) And, realistically, for any Democratic presidential candidate to be nominated, he has to win over a majority of the party's base. (It's no different for the GOP, so don't sound so shocked.) However, while the GOP base is largely conservative, the base of the Democrats is liberal (almost Green, depending on the issue), strongly in favor of a large central government (and an equally large bureaucracy), yet is four-feet-in-the-air *dovish* on foreign policy (except for *humanitarian missions*; while the official DNC position is against the invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam, they would have gladly sent troops (in fact, the same troops) to Sudan (specifically Darfur), where we would have had less in the way of international cooperation and no strategic or even tactical reason for committing troops). A certain President once called the now-late Saddam Hussein a madman, yet could not be bothered to raise anything more than indignation while he slaughtered his own citizens. (No wonder Saddam felt safe while he was in office.) His successor got his neighbors to actually agree that, despite the chaos that would almost certainly result (while the late dictator had less people skills than Hannibal Lechter, he also had the amazing ability to ruthlessly take out his internal opposition efficiently), Saddam *still* had to go. That should give you an idea which two Presidents I am referring to.
The reality is, I'm a registered Democrat (and voted for Obama in Maryland's primary); however, I'm actually aligned with McCain (not Obama or either Clinton) on foreign-policy or national-security issues. While I recognize that we have problems here at home that need fixing, the world is not going to stop turning just because we'd rather it did, and our enemies/adversaries aren't going to stop attacking us just because we asked nicely. Some of these adversaries are rather obvious (al-Qaida), while some are far from obvious (it is not all of Iran's ruling government that is against us, for example; just the most public part of it) and there are those that are, in fact, opposing the aims of radical Islamists in the most surprising places (the absolute last person I would have expected to hear calling for the overthrow of Iran's Sharia-based government would be the son of the man that put it in place, yet he has, in fact, done just that, more than once, and publicly). While McCain is, in fact, in favor of the current Iraq policy, he's never hidden why he is.