Just so that everybody will be reminded that I am not, in fact, a Democrat (Green Party ftw!) after my last post...have I mentioned lately that I've been exceptionally unimpressed with President Obama's leadership, or rather lack thereof?
In 2008, when I voted for him, I suspect I was one of millions who cast my ballot for him with a certain sense of hope and optimism. After the eight years of the George W. Bush presidency, I think a lot of us were desperately hungry for someone - anyone - who was willing to put forward a progressive-minded agenda that seemed the antidote to the doldrums in which we had found ourselves as a nation. Bonus points for being able to speak in coherent, complete sentences.
And now, pushing three years later, the buyer's regret is strong with with this guy living in Chicago. While I appreciate Obama's community organizing model of leadership, I think it is obvious after three years that...it doesn't work in DC. You cannot "community organize" the half of Congress that wakes up every morning and throws darts at a picture of you over their coffee and Cheerios. Furthermore, while I respect the President's attempts at staying "above the fray" and not getting down into the mudpit with the partisan bulldogs...that also hasn't proved remarkably successful, either. What should have been three years of telling us very direct truths about who's to blame for the pathetic state of this nation's economy - rampant deregulation, tax policies principally designed to let the rich pay lower taxes, percent-wise, than the rest of us, expensive wars marked by questionable ethical justification and little practical payoff, corporate empowerment that threatens to send us back to the "good ol' days" of robber barons and wage-slaves - was instead spent dithering spinelessly, failing to explain matters and, in the process, losing the rhetorical battle on nearly every key issue.
And the chickens are coming home to roost - the 2010 election was, let's be honest, a dumpster fire. The recent debt ceiling agreement was a Tea Party-orchestrated coup that never should have happened. A NY Times article recently compared Obama's leadership, very unfavorably, with FDR's during the Depression. FDR, from the get-go, named the culprits responsible for the economic collapse, took them to task, and - most importantly - COMMUNICATED THIS OFTEN AND WITH CLARITY TO THE PEOPLE OF THIS COUNTRY. Fireside chats, anyone? But...we don't get this with Obama. We get the aloofness that comes from being above the fray. We get a cool operation who leaves us wondering what key values he might be willing to throw under the bus next (remember how he almost gutted Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid to appease the Tea Party?). We get a man who seems to have an almost pathological aversion to conflict, in a time where we could really stand a chief executive who will NOT roll over and play dead.
If we end up with a President Perry or President Bachmann...it will be nobody's fault but Obama's.
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