What? You think that the positive meaning (what Obama called for) is what most people had in mind in selecting that kanji?

I think it was the ambiguity, at best. One character to indicate not just the improvement-change, but also the sense of 異変. (Which I have never, never, seen used in the sense of 瑞祥, so I'd think that often 変 tends negative, even.)

(I also think it was in part because they'd already picked 偽 last year, so despite this year's wealth of scandals....)

I wish I could find the political poster that's been running around here by one of the two interchangable big parties. It was the usual picture of the big fifty-year old bloke trying to look hard, with a caption that went something like "Change? 俺にまかせ".

A very Japanese take on "Yes, we can" - "Yes, I can, if you let me".

I think that Obama's campaign is what put the idea of "change" in everyone's head. 変 is, as you say, what they see when they apply this yardstick of political value to their own backyard.

But I think that what Obama has been promising to deliver is 改, and this is the message that people have actually responded to. (It's also what's going to make people feel all the more betrayed when he fails to work miracles in 2009, but oh well.) Talking to my friends in Japan, I detect enthusiasm for the same ideals applied locally. And I am an idealist after all. 改!

(I think that if there had been no Obama this year, the kanji would have been 誤 or something similarly Asocentric and flat-out negative, btw)

I think Obama promises change,meaning improvements, but I think what he'll deliver is changes, meaning some will be good but most will be negative. "Change" isn't a strategy, it's a slogan. The man has no ideas.

In Chinese the difference between 变 and 改 is not so much "neutral vs good" as it is "passive vs active".