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.

Yes, I voted for Obama.  Yes, I believed that change was coming to Washington.  Yes, I was a fool.

I’m a 71-year-old straight woman who thinks that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell military policy has been a 17-year-old abomination.  Obama campaigned on repealing it in his first year in office.  He didn’t.  In his State of the Union address, he promised to repeal it in his second year in office.  He won’t.  Not when he can send his military brass up to Capitol Hill to suggest that it has to be studied for yet another year.  What’s to study?  Do we really need to study the homophobes in the military for another year to figure out that the reason they’re homophobes is because they are in doubt about their own sexuality?  I don’t think so.

We’re losing too many valuable people when our military is already stretched to the breaking point.  The nonsense has to stop.  Congress can take care of it on its own.  For the sake of what’s right, let’s hope they do.  For the sake of what’s just, let’s hope they have more balls than Obama.

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.