Stoopid Stuff

The Soft Bigotry of...Expectations

Measured objectively, it is fair to say that so far, Barack Obama has been a pretty good president. Not great, certainly, but orders of magnitude better than his foul, venal predecessor. Unfortunately, for both him and for us, it is not possible to view his presidency objectively. Indeed, everything he does or doesn't do must be viewed through the prism of the expectations set during his very long campaign.

We could not help but see him as a forceful agent of change, major if not radical change to the system and the way it works, so every day we see the status quo is a day we wonder what happened to the Barack Obama we THOUGHT we were electing?

We expected powerful leadership, and we are disappointed to see an odd, kind of weak passiveness in the face of a weakened and discredited political opposition.

We expected the promised transparency and we have seen the Obama administration double down on state secrets, reverse itself on the release of photos and documents and just this week refuse to release the White House visitor logs a la Dick Cheney.

We expected a strong voice on freedom and equality and instead got an administration out of step with the people it claims to represent, strongly supporting DOMA and refusing to even begin to engage on Don't Ask Don't Tell.

We expected a reasonable voice to end America's horrendously counterproductive wars and we get hedging and doublespeak on Iraq, a major escalation in Afghanistan even as we edge closer to open warfare with Pakistan and North Korea.

We expected a leader that would protect the middle class from economic predation, and instead we got an administration that seems to cower before the financial lobby, that didn't even show up on Cramdown and allowed a few political grandstanders to water down his stimulus bill.

We came to expect a powerful political force, willing to stand against the worst instincts and excesses of both parties with demands for common sense and real-world solutions. We got a president who won't even fight for his own cabinet nominees, who seems to lack the political vision to make use of overwhelming majorities in both houses.

Given the choice between Obama and McCain, it's impossible to actually regret the actions and events that brought us here. But I think disappointment and discontent is brewing, as the people are tired of a political leadership that refuses to serve their interests while talking openly of serving the interests of corporations and industries. The people are beginning to sense that something has gone horribly wrong when a young, brilliant, charismatic leader is elected and cannot seem to move the nation off its unsustainable path. When a trillion dollar military is not even worth discussing, but a trillion dollars over ten years on health care for American citizens is just "too expensive". When a few of the Bush administration's worst crimes are rolled back and the vast majority of their maniacal grab for power and wealth is embraced by what we had come to believe was the "anti-bush".

President Obama, now is the time. It is not yet too late, but make no mistake, one can see "too late" from where we stand today. You must begin to stand up for what you claimed to believe in, you must begin to demonstrate a willingness to fight, even to make a few (more) enemies in the process. You have an unusual opportunity to change the course of history, and if, in the interest of some kind of political legacy you allow the self-interested rabble of congress and the media to cow you into passivity, silence and "compromise" that is not compromise, but surrender, it will all slip away. The people are becoming restless, and if you continue to demonstrate political expediency rather than political courage, you will lose everything. Popularity, power, opportunity. You are well on the way to proving yourself a fraud, another political hack who told a good story to acquire power. If that is how the Obama story plays out, we will all have lost.

posted by mikey @ 10:20 AM