March 14, 2011--1,500th Blog Posting: My President
I began this blog in August 2005 as a form of homage to my father who helped bring me to political consciousness. He literally placed the New York Times before me every morning in the hope that my interest in local sports would lead me to an interest in the larger world. Which it did. But only after my Brooklyn Dodgers and their arch rivals, the New York Giants, abandoned me and I was left to read about the news of the world and the politics in which the events reported about were intwined.
During the past five and a half years our politics has been as interesting and ultimately hopeful as it gets--from the last three years of the Bush administration to the emergence of Barack Obama, who to me, when he was a candidate, represented and promised change that I had given up believing in.
And then there is now.
I am reminded of Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. In part, he wrote:
There are many lessons here, including for our still young president who is best at speaking in the tongues of man and angels but clearly lacks the ability to move metaphoric mountains. And, I am afraid, as a result, he may be nothing.
He told us that he would be content to be a one-term president if during that one term he could accomplish great things. He also told us that he wants to be on the side of history.
Thus far, I am fearing, it my be too late.
His response to the crippled economy he inherited was to reward those who had brought it down. He appointed some who had been in the middle of the debacle, aiding and abetting it, to fix and transform it and failed to bring to justice anyone who had acted complicitously and criminally. And in the legislation he supported to provide health care to the uninsured, he capitulated passively to the very interests that have brought us the corrupt and unequal system that is currently bankrupting us.
He has ignored the real causes of our unaffordable debt, including not even commenting on the findings and recommendations of the bipartisan commissions he appointed to grapple with what to do about this impending crisis.
On the domestic front, in spite of the pledges and promises, everything seems calculated to doing only what is thought to be necessary to winning a second term.
Internationally, out of timidity and a propensity to equivocate, he compromised with his own appointees and tripled down on George Bush's ruinous war in Afghanistan and failed more recently to show leadership as the wave of history he told us he wanted to be a part of swept across the Islamic world. Who better than a Barack Hussein Obama to show support for the same kind of democratic aspirations out of which our own nation was formed? Again, everything seems over-calculated so as not to make a misstep, not to alienate independent voters.
Wait until the second term we are hearing whispered by those close to him. Then he will be unfettered and will display apolitical, bold leadership.
In the meantime, Republicans must be overjoyed. He has not triangulated, he has adopted as his own, without a fight, their agenda to offer undeserved tax breaks to the wealth and billions to the banks and health insurance companies that feed off the people who elected him. The GOP couldn't have done better with one of their own in the White House.
My father would not be happy.
During the past five and a half years our politics has been as interesting and ultimately hopeful as it gets--from the last three years of the Bush administration to the emergence of Barack Obama, who to me, when he was a candidate, represented and promised change that I had given up believing in.
And then there is now.
I am reminded of Paul's Letter to the Corinthians. In part, he wrote:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
There are many lessons here, including for our still young president who is best at speaking in the tongues of man and angels but clearly lacks the ability to move metaphoric mountains. And, I am afraid, as a result, he may be nothing.
He told us that he would be content to be a one-term president if during that one term he could accomplish great things. He also told us that he wants to be on the side of history.
Thus far, I am fearing, it my be too late.
His response to the crippled economy he inherited was to reward those who had brought it down. He appointed some who had been in the middle of the debacle, aiding and abetting it, to fix and transform it and failed to bring to justice anyone who had acted complicitously and criminally. And in the legislation he supported to provide health care to the uninsured, he capitulated passively to the very interests that have brought us the corrupt and unequal system that is currently bankrupting us.
He has ignored the real causes of our unaffordable debt, including not even commenting on the findings and recommendations of the bipartisan commissions he appointed to grapple with what to do about this impending crisis.
On the domestic front, in spite of the pledges and promises, everything seems calculated to doing only what is thought to be necessary to winning a second term.
Internationally, out of timidity and a propensity to equivocate, he compromised with his own appointees and tripled down on George Bush's ruinous war in Afghanistan and failed more recently to show leadership as the wave of history he told us he wanted to be a part of swept across the Islamic world. Who better than a Barack Hussein Obama to show support for the same kind of democratic aspirations out of which our own nation was formed? Again, everything seems over-calculated so as not to make a misstep, not to alienate independent voters.
Wait until the second term we are hearing whispered by those close to him. Then he will be unfettered and will display apolitical, bold leadership.
In the meantime, Republicans must be overjoyed. He has not triangulated, he has adopted as his own, without a fight, their agenda to offer undeserved tax breaks to the wealth and billions to the banks and health insurance companies that feed off the people who elected him. The GOP couldn't have done better with one of their own in the White House.
My father would not be happy.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
4:02 AM
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