I on the World

I recently received a survey from the Democratic National Committee, asking for my opinion on how the President and the Party were doing.  To coin an old saying, be careful what you ask for.  This was my response.:

Really want to know what we think?  Okay, here’s what we think.  People, who had such high hopes for a new president, for real change in Washington, for actual solutions to some of our problems, are now scratching their heads and wondering how they could have been so bamboozled, how new and fresh could turn so quickly into business as usual.  Don’t get me wrong, a McCain/Palin White House would have been a total disaster.  But even knowing that isn’t good enough.

Perhaps it’s true that the qualities one needs to become president are not the same as the qualities one needs to be president, but holding nothing more than popularity contests every four years is how we keep digging ourselves deeper and deeper into ruin.  Mr. Obama comes across as aloof, weak, naïve, and in over his head.  He has surrounded himself with the same garbage that’s long been wrong with Washington – Emanuel, Rubin, Bernanke, Summers, Geithner, to name just a few and, across the board, he is taking some very bad advice.  The result?  Instead of fixing the problems left behind by the Cheney/Bush regime, he’s compounding them.  Change we can believe in, eh?  When?  Where?

Campaign promises should be kept.  Or they should not be made.  Health care reform is a joke.  The economy, from most people’s perspective, is still on the brink of collapse.  Financial reform is even more laughable than health reform.  And I just can’t wait to see what an energy bill would look like!  Even with the kind of majorities in both houses that Republicans can only dream about – you can’t get anything meaningful done.

The only thing folks in Washington seem to care about is making sure their own pockets are lined.  If our government doesn’t give a damn about making the lives of ordinary Americans better, then everyone in Washington should just get the hell out.  How about Congressional term limits?  And true campaign finance reform?  As I’m sure you know, both are amazingly simple to do.  If the DNC really cared about this country instead of just getting more Democrats elected to office, you’d insist on it.  That is, if you aren’t just as corrupt and incompetent as the other side.

And while you’re at it, get us the hell out of Iraq.  Get us the hell out of Afghanistan.  Enough good men and women are already dead.  Enough money has already been squandered.  And then there’s foreign aid, a wonderful thing, to be sure – but don’t you think it should be dispensed only after a country first takes care of its own homeless and starving and sick?

Al Qaeda isn’t going to destroy America.  It won’t have to.  We’re doing a first-rate job of it all by ourselves.  And China – the next world super-power – is waiting in the wings, just watching it happen. . .and maybe giving it a little nudge now and again.

We want universal health care.  We want financial reform that will curb greed and never allow anything like this decade’s debacle to happen again.  We want a serious jobs bill.  We want clean energy now – not after every lake and bay and gulf and ocean has been destroyed.  In other words, fix what you were elected to fix, or a lot of us will be looking elsewhere in 2010 and 2012.

I believed. Yes, I did.  I believed Mr. Obama would bring change to Washington.  But other than turning the White House black, he didn’t.  He made a lot of promises.  He didn’t keep them.  He said no more business as usual.  Then he stacked his administration with the same old Washington entrenched – Emanuel, Gates, Geithner, Holder, Panetta, Summers. . .the list is endless.

Then there was the bought-and-paid-for Congress, heralding the “landmark” health care reform bill – except there wasn’t any reform in it.  And now we have the “landmark” financial reform bill – except, again, there isn’t any reform in it.  And I can’t wait for the “landmark” energy reform bill – can you?  Health insurance companies are still raking in the dough.  Banks are still screwing the people.  And the oil companies, well, they’ll just keep on destroying the planet in the name of greed.

Does all this mean the president is weak?  Of course it does.  Does it mean he’s scared?  Probably.  Does it mean he’s naïve?  Undoubtedly.  It also means he will not be elected to a second term.  Certainly not by me, and millions of others just like me.  You know the old saying — fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

Word to the wise — Republicans, find a moderate.  None of your teabag extremists will do, so get smart, find a moderate for 2012.

Okay, I admit it.  I donated to, campaigned in favor of, and voted for Barack Obama, and I’m not exactly thrilled about it so far.

He promised transparency.  I guess that meant he was going to have the windows at the White House washed on a regular basis.  He promised an end to lobbyists in the White House.  I guess he meant that lovely white house you can see when you’re heading down I-95 past Emporia, Virginia.  He promised the dog he would get for his kids would be a shelter mutt.  I guess he meant some other kids.  He promised to close Guantanamo.  I guess he meant after he found another galaxy that would take all the detainees.  He promised to reverse Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  I guess he meant in the Irish military.  He promised to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.  I guess he must have been talking about some other defense project.  He promised to end the war in Iraq.  I guess he meant just before he comes up for reelection.  He promised a whole new focus on clean energy.  I guess he meant after drilling the remaining life out of the planet.  He promised there would be no place for torture in America.  I guess he meant after he exonerated everyone who had anything to do with it.  He promised health care reform.  I guess he meant health care revision, where the people get screwed and the insurance companies get richer.  And most of all, he promised change – change in the way Washington works.  Oops!  I just blinked.  Did I miss it?  Granted, there are limitations to what one person can do, but I don’t know whether I’d want to vote for him again.

The problem is, I look across at the republicans, and I see. . .nothing.  No ideas, no solutions, no leadership.  I see the token black head of the RNC, who is only marginally less than incompetent.  I see the House leader and his runner-up (John Boner and Eric Can’t-er) who are so devoid of character and substance that I wonder how they keep getting elected.  I see the Senate leader and his sidekick (Mitch McCon-ell and John Kil) whose only mission in life seems to be putting an uppity president in his place by just saying no.  And I see intellectual midgets like Palin and Bachmann urging a group of undereducated, under-informed, unintelligent teabags into the kind of hatred and violence I thought had died with the Sixties.

Show me a leader who cares more about the people of this country than lining his own pockets.  Show me a leader who speaks for all Americans, not just Wall Street or Main Street or Rich Street or White Street.  Show me a leader who can take us from the brink of disaster to redemption – because that’s exactly where we are.  Show me a leader who understands that.  I’ll vote for him.

The Democrats can call what they’re trying to do health care reform but it isn’t health care reform.  It’s health care insurance and pharmaceutical appeasement.  It’s let’s pass something because we campaigned on passing something, and maybe the people won’t realize what we’re passing is appeasement, not reform.  The problem is, it isn’t fooling very many anymore.  Not a lot of change to believe in.

The truism that the qualities one needs to become President are not the same as the qualities one needs to be President has never been so dramatically illustrated as it has been in the case of Barack Obama this week. . .well, at least not since it was so dramatically illustrated in the case of George W. Bush for eight years.

It’s easy to promise, it’s hard to deliver, and the list of undelivered promises made by Mr. Obama grows daily — from transparency, to changing Washington, to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to closing Guantanamo, to. . .well, you know what I mean.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me state that I voted for Barack Obama for President, and contributed to his campaign.  Not because I had anything in particular against John McCain, other than his totally irresponsible choice of a vice-presidential candidate, but because I had come to recognize that Dick Cheney and George Bush had headed one of the worst, if not the worst, administrations in the history of our county.  I concluded it was time for a change.  Not necessarily the kind of change Mr. Obama was campaigning on, but change in general.  You know, like a clean sweep.

I am now beginning to wonder what on earth I was thinking of.  Because the last nine months have shown, if nothing else, that politics is politics, no matter what party is in power.  Mr. Obama is no beacon of light or breath of fresh air.  He is a charming, articulate politician, who did what he had to do to get elected, and is now proceeding to do whatever he believes he must do to get reelected.

And therein lies the problem with government.  People elected to public office are generally focused on one thing and one thing only – getting reelected.  Some of them are also focused on lining their coffers with corporate interest dollars and/or securing their futures as lobbyists once they leave office.  Few of them are particularly focused on doing what they were elected to do – represent the people.

In the past eight years, we have spent an estimated three trillion dollars, and still counting, on two useless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we cannot win and will not win, but we can’t find a way to pay for quality, affordable health insurance for every American?

The bills making their way through the House and Senate are jokes, nothing more than page after page of watered down words that translate into giveaways to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, engineered by congresspeople bought and paid for by said industries, and a president who campaigned on health care reform and a strong public option and holding said industries accountable, but has more recently spent his time in closed-door sessions with members of said industries, making assurances that the status quo will not be significantly disturbed.

In the past year alone, we have given away some twenty-four trillion dollars to banks who engaged in practices that make Bernie Madoff look like a nobody.  With foxes like Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and Ben Bernanke in charge of the hen houses, we will never see most of that money again, but we can’t find a way to pay for quality, affordable health care for every American?

Is this what we elected Barack Obama to do — steal from the poor and give to the rich?

Give ma a break!