Barack Obama ran and won on a platform of change: both a change from how things have been done during the previous eight years, as well as some fundamental changes in the way things have been done in the past. Pretty tall order, but the American people saw the need for true change and voted accordingly. Now the 40-odd percent who never wanted him in office and never wanted change to begin with are screaming (which they would have done regardless) and some of those who were swept into an unrealistic zeal are looking at a man who has been in office less than a year and asking why he hasn’t changed everything yet.
Guess what? Fundamental change does not happen overnight and change ain’t pretty. It is hard and it comes in fits and spurts. It takes time to walk into a situation that is decades in the making and to bring it back to right under the best of circumstances, let alone when you are also fighting two wars and economic recession. To the naysayers, I challenge you to find a president who walked into circumstances like this, and managed to do better with higher popularity ratings during the first year of his presidency. FDR and the country was the target of a conspiracy by big money to forcibly take over the government. Abraham Lincoln was the target of many attempted assassination attempts and cabals within his own government from the first day of his presidency. Woodrow Wilson was brought to a debilitating stroke by the backstabbing within the government and the greed and manipulation by the Allies during the war treaty process and the peace process afterward.
While I’m not saying that Obama will enter this pantheon of great men, I make the point that even presidents who are beloved in history were not very popular until the challenges of the day were placed in the rearview mirror. No modern president has benefited more from this than Ronald Reagan. People have totally forgotten about just what occurred during the Iran-Contra affair-how Reagan, Bush and key members broke and subverted the very same laws and policies that they themselves put into place and lied to the American public about it.
I believe that once the economy begins to truly recover in the next six to twelve months, people see that old people everywhere have not been murdered by federal healthcare police as a result of reform, that no one has gone broke from environmental regulation, and that trying to work with the rest of the world instead of trying to tell (or militarily force) them what to do works, people will begin to see the exaggerations and outright lies of the agitators and naysayers for what they are and react accordingly.
Americans will see how a small, very vocal segment of the public have allowed their rage and frustration over things that have very little to do with the issues they are protesting to get the better of them. This small, but very vocal, minority has permitted their judgment to become clouded and their common sense to be obscured. The people of this country have already rejected the tactics of the Party of NO, the obstructionist GOP; time will bear out the rest and see the rejection of the bitter agitators and naysayers that have tried to claim the title of Independent. The danger of repeatedly making claims that are based on hazy half-truths (at best) and peddling them as facts is that when what you predict does not come to pass, you lose your credibility and no one believes anything you have to say. The Tea Party leaders like Glenn Beck and Dick Armey, and “ideologically pure” Republicans like Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin and the like seem to be forgetting that.
I think the political landscape and the mindset of the American public will be drastically different in summer 2012 then it is now, just as it is drastically different now then it was in the summer of 2007. I’m glad these trials have come up at the beginning of Obama’s administration, when there is time for the true effects of what he has done to manifest themselves before the next presidential election. Maybe that’s why he has pushed so hard, so fast. But time is on Obama’s side and I think it will become obvious that he is pointing us in the right direction. That’s why I’m pretty confident that barring any unforeseen catastrophes, President Obama will win a second term in office.
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“Reagan wasn’t a bad guy or a bad president, but canonization is not rightfully in his future.”
Neither is it appropriate for Obama, but we got school children singing his praise. Just saying fair is fair.
J,
As I thought, from your statement you forgot the details of Iran-Contra. Reagan was the one who said he would not negotiate with terrorists and balcklisted Iran. Well, in order to fund his pown pet project, he not only negitiated with the terrorists in Iran, he sold them weapons, all in order to subvert Congress who voted AGAINST funding the Contras because that was what people told them they wanted them to do. That’s checks and balnces for you… And your “longest prosperity this country has ever seen” lasted about 5 years. You forgot the market crash in 1989 that had brokers throwing themselves out of windows. The period set in place by Clinton lasted longer-about 15 years-and he balanced the budget, which was blown only a year after W got into office. REagan did not sefeat the Soviet Union-50 years of trying to build an infrastructure to conpete with what we had been building over the past 150 is what destroyed the Soviet Union. They tried to take a country from the Middle Agers into the Space Age in 70 years while maintaining one of the most powerful armies in the world. I don’t think many countries have the ability to do that and be successful. China learned from the USSR’s mistakes and is just focusing on economic warfare. As the label on nearly every product in Wal Mart and the trade deficit will suggest, they have done MUCH better. Some saint you got there…Reagan wasn’t a bad guy or a bad president, but canonization is not rightfully in his future. Conservatives like to point to him because he is the only modern Republican that Americans could stand after he left office.
If you believe that Hannity and Limbaugh and the like are men of such character that they deserve to be called “Great Men”, then again you have fallen down on the job when it comes to digging into the truth.
Put the Kool-Aid down, J.
C,
The Russians wanted Stalin back when things got rough during the change from communism to capitalism. Do you think they really wanted him back, or did they want the “prosperity” that went with it? Well, if W or McCain was in the Oval Office right now, the eceonomy wouldn’t be any better, so…Just shows how short people’s memory really is…The Tea Party will be old news by 2012 because it is built on subterfuge, lies, hot air and frustration. There is over 2 years for the American public to see that, and they will. Meanwhile Obama will be taking concrete action to address the major issues we have faced for the last 10 years.
When you tell a kid that they will become addicted to cocaine the first time they try it, but they try it anyway and do not become hooked, everything you say to them becomes suspect. The Tea Party has created some “out there” doom and gloom scenarios to gain some short term advantage in the mind of the vocal minority. When their scenarios turn out to be hot air and lies, their credibility will be shot. They have spent the last 6-9 months writing checks they can’t cash and it will catch up with them…Lincoln himself said “You can’t fool all the people all of the time.”…Right now the Tea Party is an unholy, but unsustainable, alliance of fundamentalists, white supremacists, “I vote with my pocket” voters, libertarians and conservatives. As soon as the economic tide turns and Obama’s policies begin to show effectiveness, you’ve lost the “I vote with my pocket” voters. The libertarians aren’t loyal to anyone and the conservatives are practical enough to realize that their hopes rest with a party candidate. That leaves the fundamentalists and the white supremacists- that’s a minority and a crazy one at that.
The Tea Party stepped over the line when they began the RINO line of attack and began demanding “ideologically purity.” In order to get things done and to cooperate, you have to put necessity first at times. The zealots would rather sit atop an high horse and let the country burn to the ground than to come up with solutions to the issues that MUST be addressed for the well-being of this nation and its future. Yeah, those are the ones I want in control of this country…Tell me, how different is that attitude from the attitude of the Muslim ideological purists we are fighting in the Middle East? It’s not. Same attitude, different religion. If it’s wrong over there, then isn’t it wrong over here? But isn’t that the country that the fundamentalists and white supremacists would have us live in?
“To the naysayers, I challenge you to find a president who walked into circumstances like this, and managed to do better with higher popularity ratings during the first year of his presidency.” – Eh? The One has had the fastest downslide of any president in his first year including Bush! He’s under 50% and falling like a stone. Stop drinking the kool-aid!
“This small, but very vocal, minority has permitted their judgment to become clouded and their common sense to be obscured.” – Over 45$ of americans wish they could put Bush back in office and over 50% of Americans do not approve of Obama. Where is this SMALL minority? I say it is progressives trying to make their perception reality. And it will fail.
“Barack Obama ran and won on a platform of change: both a change from how things have been done during the previous eight years, as well as some fundamental changes in the way things have been done in the past.” – Yeah changes like no lobbyists in the white house but guess who has the most visits? Yep the SEIU. Who said they would be the most transparent administration in history? Yep Obama yet he didn’t want to release white house visitor records. Who said that he would make sure every bill in legislation would be able to be read by the public? Yep Obama, yet healthcare and the stimulus were not made available. Nice try, but again your short term memory is affected by your kool-aid consumption.
Laura, Laura, Laura,
The reason Obama (Pelosi and Reed) are moving so fast is so the public won’t know what the hell is happening!
The Socialist eutopia cannot be created if enough Americans see it coming. The promise of slow, sure TRANSPARENT public dialog died with the swearing in. The death of capitalism may delite you, but be sure the vast majority would not be so hasty.
Pay-Offs, not principles have been used to get this health nightmare enacted. Back room deals, one by one. The latest vote was procured by giving one state no co-pays, period. Just one state, for that one vote. You call it gettin er’ done, I call it corruption.
As for your heros of change, pretty vauge in this Presidents case, Lincoln jailed anyone who desented and shut down disagreeing news. FDR, the father of our coming Socialism created a machine that would forever buy votes with entitlements on the backs of the producers.
You so often speak of the crazies, teabaggers, constitutionalist. Reagan to your side is a dirty word. Well young lady, he did more for you and I than a dozen presidents before him. Yes, he broke the don’t hurt the Commies in South America rule, set into place by your side. He took a shattered economy and through reducing taxes created the longest prosperity this country has ever seen, and defeated the Soviet Union.
As to our current crop of crazies, Limbaugh, Hannity and the like, I say “Great Men” who stand on our Constitution.
2012, you can expect someone like that in the Office of the Presidency.
If I am wrong, and you win, you can expect the biggest state dinners reserved for “my version” of crazies, like Chavez and Putin. Let’s hope you don’t win. For all our sakes.
You made some good points here…Keep up the good work.