FTT Off-Topic: Dear Mr. President
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| Neither of us is happy about this |
Several weeks into what turned out, even to his supporters, as one of the worst second terms of American presidential history, George Bush The Younger announced that he had the political capital required to remake Social Security. The move galvanized the frequently spineless Democratic opposition, and something magical happened: they won the day, by a lot, and ore or less smacked down the idea that the third rail of American politics was no longer electric, and that you could pee on it all you like.
A small aside to the folks who want to tell me what we can and can not afford: no one ever prevents anyone in this country from going to war on economic grounds. We always have money for that. Just as we always have money for bankers, and tax deductions for private jets and mortgages on mansions, and military contractors, and on a local level, pro sports teams and casino operators and oil companies and God knows what else. Only when it comes to keeping poor old people from getting fat off the premium cat food, or something that clearly pays off in the long run like universal pre-K, do we get the lectures on what Serious People think we can and can not afford. It's all bunkum.
So there's a simple thing to call a Democratic, who gets elected to the Presidency for the second time, mostly because he's not the 47% guy who seemed to be all about making sure that the wealthy continued to get the goodies, while the olds lost their Social Security, Medicare and anything else we could take away... who then decides that he's going to get cred from the Serious People by bargaining with the people who want to make the olds lose their et cetera, et cetera, under some idea that deficits will go down and we'll all get happy fun time from that...
An idiot.
And one who will do himself the very poor favor of wiping out any enthusiasm at all among his key supporters.
You see, the other side does not really care about cutting the deficit; if they did, they would have dealt with it when they held all of the cards after 9/11. No one really cares about paying down the deficit; we already did this in the 1990's, under Bill Clinton, and the only thing the other side then did was launch unnecessary wars as a sideshow from a failure to provide security, then cut taxes for the wealthy. Neither of which did a damned thing for the economy, assuming you weren't already wealthy and/or a defense contractor.
So, Mr. President?
I'd like to propose a new plan for you.
Do the job that your supporters elected you to do.
Protect the poor, rather than a mythical legacy of economic achievement that won't matter.
Stop playing games that will be used against the saps in your party that actually need to be elected again.
Do whatever is possible to attack the real long-term dangers to this country -- namely, long-term systemic high unemployment, climate change and infrastructure issues. (Hey, here's an idea: public works programs that work on either of the latter two issues, thereby fixing the first.) And if those don't do enough for you, work on immigration, marriage equality, media monopolies, campaign financing, universal background checks, closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the military drone program, copyright protection against piracy and prosecuting the people who lied us into war and the banking meltdown.
You know, stuff that the people who voted for you actually wanted.
Because if we wanted someone to kill the poor olds, we would have voted for the other guy.
And when you do what that guy would have done, no one is going to call you brave, or wise, or bipartisan, or justified by history.
Instead, we're going to call you what we called the last guy who decided to squander his second term on something that no one, outside of a professional pundit class that represents no actual political constituency, wants...
An idiot.
With a wasted second term.
Moving on...
6 comments:
When are you going to realize that the two parties are essentially the same? Neither has any intentions of doing what is right for the country. Neither has any intentions of reigning in spending, helping the poor, ending the ongoing wars. Because all that would put an end to their perceived power. Power belongs in the hands of the people, not Government. Government of the people, by the people and for the people died a long time ago. The current dude in the big house is merely a community organizer with no idea how to actually lead people.
The President's party didn't lie us into the Iraq War. It also didn't produce the tax cuts to the wealthy that spent us into deficit. It also doesn't spend it's time denying climate change, evolution, marriage equality and, well, basic science. And if Obama was as little as you say he is, he wouldn't have won the primaries, let alone election and re-election.
He just keeps making the same mistake, over and over again, of trying to work with people of bad faith. It needs to stop; I don't want to have to wait a decade or more for the Rs to blunder their way into irrelevance, the way they have in California, for useful stuff to happen.
His party may have not lied us into Iraq, but they cheered it on nonetheless. You can't tell me the other side was smart enough to pull the wool over their eyes. They aren't denying climate change, only the impact that humans have on the natural cycle. Marriage equality? Shouldn't even be in political discussion (I don't care if men want to marry other men...it doesn't impact my life). Obama isn't little, he is just not a leader. He is an effective communicator when the teleprompter is on. He won both primaries and elections due to an extremely week field.
The Rs were smart enough to get 3 out of 4 people in this country to cheer it on, mostly because they own the media. At least on my side, if you were wrong on Iraq, you aren't still running on it as if you were not.
Weak, not week, and I've never heard you praise anyone in public service, so I'm not exactly going to take your gauge on the field.
Everyone use teleprompters; Obama writes his speeches, for the most part. Find another false meme.
I never said he wasn't bright. He can write. So can you. Many people do indeed use teleprompters. I was implying that when the teleprompter isn't there, he isn't as compelling. A leader is someone who others follow to a common goal. Looks to me like even his disciples are starting to question him. Happens. Not really a false meme. You're right that I don't praise many people in public service. I don't trust them. Neither did our founding fathers. I'd love it if I didn't have to trust them with so damn much.
For what it's worth, I don't like or trust the R's either. It isn't as if they did good by me during their last stint. You know, I look around at all the folks in government. I truly believe most enter public service with the best intents, even Barry. Problem is, no one can know the incentives and motivations for 300+ million people, yet they all still try. They try to steer the economy through crony capitalism, choosing winners and losers in the process, with our money of course. Perhaps it's time for the federal government to manage the limited responsibilities set out for it in the Constitution before trying to change the world. It really hasn't done such a great job of that, has it?
I gotta say... the hero worship of the fathers, it's starting to grate. We don't expect science or music or literature or any other field of human endeavor to just stop and cease development, and yet we're supposed to think that these guys had all the answers, and that everything else is suspect because, well, it wasn't said by the Founders. Faced with the complexity of global diplomacy, they'd look no better than what we currently have.
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