Heres my take. Disclosure, I'm a moderate, 19 year old American political science major, originating from boston, currently living in France.
You ask what happened to the respect for the president? It disappeared with the celibritization of the office.
Thats why we had the candidates that we had. The fact that the outcome was the same "lose-lose" we've been seeing for years doesn't change, but the candidates are out to get the most "fans" by crowd pleasing. Obama by telling the bleeding heart liberals who think that the US should give health care to every human on the planet that we will insure everyone, without realizing that doing that is completely economically unrealistic, and McCain by getting a controversial, Tabloid worthy running mate.
Now I'm not saying that the bleeding heart liberals are totally wrong in what they want. In fact, if they want a decommercialised country, where everyone is taken care of, they can look at france, and then see that over half of anyone's given income is taken in taxes, and even in the most wealthy areas, having wireless internet, television, new cars, and everything else they take for granted goes out the window, for the health plan that winds up paying for the immigrants from Mahgreb who don't work, and suckle off those who do. Sounds like a wonderful place to live! There is a new tax, on CO2 emissions. Every 7500km you drive, you are taxed something like €70. This doesn't go to the government. This is directly transferred to people who live in the country to pay for their gas. Sounds like a fantastic idea, eh?
And the next person to bring up the race card with Obama makes my sh*t list. 1) he is more Asian than black. The only reason every rap song hails him as a hero, is because his advertising team was successful marketing him as a "black president to change things." in order to stir things up and make the "politically aware people" like half my family think "only racists will vote against them" therefore being one. What a genius move. Well, like the political forum said before, and I can say out of experience exchanging my USD's for Euros, its all I have left.