January 25, 2010--Mr. President: Come to My Diner In South Florida

After the election last Tuesday in Massachusetts, to change the subject and demonstrate he is far from a lame duck, President Obama traveled to Lorain, Ohio, hit hard by the Great Recession, to talk in campaign mode about how he will continue “to fight” for the things “average Americans” sent him to Washington to accomplish. He used the word “fight” literally 20 times in his remarks to make sure we got the point.

He spoke about the economy, the environment, and of course health care. But before he got to the main substance of is comments, unscripted, as if responding to the charge that even after just one year he is isolated and out of touch with us average American’s, he pined about how things change when you become the President and how difficult it then is to escape the White House bubble and mix with people.

With a hint of sadness in his voice, he said:

For two years, I had the privilege of traveling across this country, and I had a chance to talk to people like you, and go to diners and sit in barbershops, and hear directly about the challenges that all of you are facing in your lives, and the opportunities that you’re taking advantage of, and all the things that we face together as a nation. And the single hardest thing — people ask me this all the time — the single hardest thing about being President is that it’s harder for me to do that nowadays. It’s harder to get out of the bubble.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the White House is a wonderful place to work. You live above the store — (laughter) — which means I’ve got a very short commute. I’m having — I see my daughters before they go to school and I see them at night for dinner, even if I have to go back down to the office. And that makes everything so much better. But the truth is, this job is a little confining, and that is frustrating. I can’t just go to the barbershop or sit in a diner. I can’t always visit people directly.

To this I say: “Mr. President, with all due respect, aren’t you the President? The Commander In Chief? And as such can’t you tell your people, including commanding the Secret Service, that you want to get out there among the people so you can hear directly what’s on our minds? Not unprotected, of course, but on your own at least once every couple of weeks. To visit your old barber shop and a diner, including mine here in South Florida.

I’m serious, get on that big plane, fly it down to West Palm, and drive on over. We’re only half an hour from the airport. I’d suggest arriving without an entourage at about 7:30 or 8:00, when some are getting before-work coffee and others are there to hang out for an hour of good food and great talk.

And don’t worry too much about being sandbagged by a lot of Tea Bag folks, though there are a few of them, or think that everyone here is a Republican who voted for McCain and now after one year are even more turned off to you. Actually, about half the regulars took a chance and voted for you. And to give you another sense of who’s actually here, when two-years ago presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani campaigned at a nearby Dunkin’ Donut only about a dozen people turned out to see him.

On the other hand, it would do you good to get an earful from some of the people who are now totally disenchanted with what’s going on in Washington, but unlike you, though you expressed some of your own frustrations, they don’t, as you put it in Lorain, have a deal as good as yours. They have to pay their own bills.

Most of them, most of us are worried about losing our incomes, our homes, and our futures. You need to hear from us directly. Not through the filter of so-called town meetings and rallies. And you also need to hear what those, like me, who still support you, are saying. We’re on board, but not happy.

So pull up a stool at the counter, order a mug of coffee and some eggs and grits. As a preview, here’s a sampling of who you’d meet and what you’d hear. These are real people but I’ve changed their names and some facts of their lives so as to give them cover in case you turn up and sit down next to them.

And I suggest you do a lot more listening than speechifying.

You’d love Nick Parker. He’s an ex Marine who served in Vietnam and then went on to a career that had him living and working in West Africa. He won’t say for sure but we all think his corporate job was a cover for some government-sanctioned snooping. He still gets his hair cut in buzz-cut Marine style. By a lady barber who charges only $7.00. I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you about the place, even take you there, and also about his concerns.

He didn’t vote for you (too inexperienced, he said at the time) but is very much with you when it comes to how to fight in Afghanistan. He lives mainly on pensions that depend on the interest-rate environment and so has seen it cut about in half. But he also invests in commodities, which he will tell you he thinks are a hedge against hyper-inflation that he sees to be at most a year or two away.

And he will tell you to hire some more gray-haired folks for your administration. People who have been around the block a few times. And for the stimulus program, which he still doesn’t like but wants to see succeed (he’s a patriot and wants everything you are trying to accomplish for the economy come out well) he thinks you made a big mistake asking Joe Biden to oversee it. He says, “What does Biden know about running anything more than his Senate office?

“Why not ‘draft’ someone like Donald Trump to oversee it. I hate that guy—can you get over that hairdo of his—but he does know how to get things done. We need more people in government who actually know how to do things. Like that industrialist Henry Keiser who Roosevelt during the Second World War put in charge of building Liberty Ships. You should do the same kind of thing.”

That, Mr. President, is probably the kind of thing Nick would tell you and a lot more.

Sally Mayfair is another one of the regulars. She’s a pistol. Full of spit and vinegar. She has to work three jobs to keep up the payments on her house and her health insurance. And never complains about that or anything. She takes life as it comes. All her jobs are part time; and even if the places she worked offered a health plan, as a part-timer she wouldn’t be eligible for it. Now she’s afraid she’ll run out of coverage since she had cancer surgery about four years ago and she is bucking up against her lifetime maximum. “One recurrence,” she says, “and there goes the house.” About this you would be in full synch. In fact, she voted for you enthusiastically in part because she believed you would do something about health care and would do so again tomorrow if you were running.

Her 16 year-old is struggling in high school. He’s smart enough but he’s bored. Because of cutbacks in funding here, they’ve had to lay off teachers and his class sizes have gotten so big that he gets lost in the crowd. He needs a lot of individual attention and that’s not available anymore. Nor are the art and music classes, which were his favorites. They too were cut because of lack of money. So she worries that he is slowly drifting into trouble. He got suspended last week for a dress code violation. He says it was because they have it in for him. Plenty of other kids, he claims, wear their hats the same way. Sally would like to talk about him with the assistant principal but would have to take a day off from work and that would mean losing pay. Which she can’t afford.

If you sat next to her, she’d likely tell you that though health care is important, fixing the public schools is even more so. This from a cancer patient running out of coverage. “If we can’t do right by our kids,” she’d say, “what kind of future will they have. Much less the rest of us. So,” she’d advise, “I hope you’ll take that on as your top priority. If we can’t take care of our kids, how can we take care of anything else?”

Jim Lacey is a town cop. He’s an Iraq veteran. From the last time around. Desert Storm. He’s African American, which is not unusual for police here; and although he worries about all the young people he encounters—about their education and the kinds of jobs available for them—he is especially concerned about black kids. Not because he and they are black but because what he sees from his patrol car is many more blacks than whites getting into serious trouble.

He’d tell you, “If this were true with the white kids, I’d feel the same way—we should pay special attention to them. The big problem, as I see it, is that other than restaurant and hotel work there aren’t any jobs for young people. When I was their age, before I went into the army, we were building things here and that was good for me because I wasn’t great at academics. I could make good money in construction but now with all the illegals, sorry to bring that up, what work of that kind there is goes to them. And it’s all off the books, which isn’t good from a tax perspective. Plus it also builds resentment among folks who can’t find work.

“So if you were to ask my advice, which I know you’re not, like Sally, I’d say pay attention to our young people. That needs to happen for all the reasons Sally mentioned but also if would be good for you politically. No one will disagree that we have to do better by our kids. I’ll bet even some Republicans would go along with you if you emphasized that.”

Than, drifting in later would be Harry Greene. He’d intentionally come in after the rest of us knowing you’d be there. So as not to appear too eager to meet you. He has a lot of that kind of pride. He took over a small office services business from his parents. His people have been in the area for three generations. They have been among the town’s leaders. He employs eight people and is struggling now with all the costs associated with keeping their benefits going. He’s even cut his own weekly draw, trying to ride out the recession without laying anyone off or cutting their health care coverage.

He went to the University of Florida and then earned a law degree at Florida Atlantic, going to school at night. He’s a real Gator and one of the smartest and most articulate people you’ll ever meet. You wouldn’t be able not to love this guy, including some of his stories and anecdotes. And he would like you too, even though he and his people have been life-long Republicans. Quite conservative ones. So conservative that he doesn’t like the current Florida governor, Charlie Crist, and not just for embracing you when you came to Florida to talk about your stimulus plan. Crist’s just not conservative enough for Harry’s taste.

He’d let you know what he thinks about your first year. It will be no surprise that he doesn’t like what you’ve been up to. He was and is against the bailouts for corporations—he even suspects that it’s an intentional step toward socialism; he disagrees vigorously about cap and trade, feeling the science isn’t there to support the theory (and he calls it a theory) that humans are contributing to global warming; and he suspects that you’re a traditional big government, tax-and-spend liberal.

But he would want you to do something to support small businesses such as his own, and this includes doing something about health care. Not the broad, ambitious program you’ve been promoting. He thinks it was an ideological mistake to push for that, a practical error, and a political blunder. As a result he’d claim that you spent most of your first year and much of your political capital on this and will likely walk away with little or nothing.

He’s happy to see his Republicans feeling resurgent; but like Nick Parker, he views himself as a good and true American and thus wants his president, whoever he might be, to succeed.

He’d tell you what for weeks he’s been telling me, “You should have gone after some low-hanging fruit when it comes to health care. Things even Republicans like me could support. You should have had your party in Congress pass legislation to make sure no one gets denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition; you should close the donut hole in the prescription drug program, and you should not only help subsidize some of our poorest people so they can get coverage, but you should also listen to people like me—really listen to us—about what you could do to help small business owners provide coverage; and also while we’re talking, what other kinds of tax things you could advocate to help us survive and grow. Because that’s the real way to create jobs. Make-work schemes don’t work.”

Harry would say, “Though I want to see a Republican president elected in three years, if you did this kind of thing, you’d build the perception that you can do more than eloquently present ideas and raise hope but also that you can get things done. That you can deliver some needed and popular things for the people who elected you—independent, middle-class, hard working people like the folks here in the diner.”

He’d smile at you and, leaning closer, say, “Of course don’t tell anybody that I advised you this way since I’d be in big trouble with some of my friends!”

Some come on down Mr. President. I’ll even pick up your check if the election laws allow that, and I’d offer a little advice of my own—I like your notion of the audacity of hope; but isn’t it true that there is no real hope with only the audacity of words.