Don't Let The Terrorists Win! Vote Obama
Bill Clinton gave Barack Obama a backhanded compliment on the campaign trail the other day, telling supporters at a rally that he's more excited about Obama in 2012 than he was four years ago. Honestly, I can relate. I'm cynical by nature, so Obama's vapid "hope and change" theme in 2008 was setting off every bullshit alarm in my body, particularly with the backdrop of a financial crisis having just exploded seven weeks before the election. Hard to muster up much excitement for a newly elected President who would be stepping into an economic environment worse than anything since Hoover.
So I'm with Bill Clinton in being one of the few people who are more impressed with Obama's actual Presidency than his 2008 campaign. Having watched the America I know decline my entire life, my expectations from a President have become remarkably low, so the fact that Obama managed to avoid a depression, funnel through nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus with virtually no sign of the corruption that is usually endemic with such government outlays, and steer between the icebergs of the double-dip recessions that usually come after financial crises even as a scandalously obstructionist opposition party worked every step of the way to destroy him strikes me as nothing short of incredible.
So yes, the bar on "achievement" in the America of the last 30 years is low, and I'm frankly lukewarm on Obama's top first-term achievement--the health career--because I don't believe it will come within a time zone of working as advertised. But the aforementioned tidal wave of unwavering opposition Obama faced at every juncture is what makes his overall accomplishments noteworthy, and it's eyebrow-raising to say the least that otherwise intelligent media voices are discounting this recalcitrant Republican opposition entirely and shrugging off Obama's ability to work across the aisle...as if it's his fault.
I can honestly say I'm embarrassed to live in Des Moines after reading last weekend's Des Moines Register editorial endorsing Mitt Romney for President. It was without a shadow of a doubt the worst endorsement editorial I've ever read. The Mudville Gazette could have done a better job, even when it comes to defending the indefensible in the form of a Romney Presidency. The Register's argument was that even though Republican Congressional leaders were primarily responsible for an unprecedented level of gridlock to an extent that the country was hours away for selling off national parks to avoid liquidation, their level of partisan terrorism should be rewarded by voting out the guy who they refused to deal with and trade him in for somebody they could deal with, even though they conceded their ideas were wrongheaded. Huh?
Previously sane political reporter Bob Woodward advanced a similar if more subtle narrative in his book last summer. It's a shocking calculus that offers a winning blueprint for all future opposition parties if they know a compliant press corps will ultimately reward them for their intransigence. Rather than rewarding a political party who said publicly and without hesitation that their top priority for the next two years was defeating the President, the hacks and imbeciles of the Des Moines Register editorial board should be demanding that voters ram this cyclops in the eye with a battering ram until it's knocked it into the sea. It never occurred to me that anybody outside of Fox News would be making this argument, especially a renowned liberal paper like the Register, and the fact that they've discovered a level of political cynicism that even I haven't come to terms to with is quite a dubious achievement.
The downward trajectory of the nation and the declining ability of anybody in Washington to reverse it has kept me from casting a ballot "enthusiastically" for anybody since my first and only vote for Senator Paul Wellstone in 1996. But in this case, I will get a lot of value out of voting for "revenge". Obama actually made a throwaway line on the campaign trail on Friday telling the crowd that "voting is the best revenge", which Romney seized upon and built a straw man about in his weekend rallies, but Obama's remark inadvertently described the mindset which I'll have when walking into the voting booth on Tuesday. And frankly, any American who isn't voting with vengeance in mind towards the Congressional leaders who were a hair's breadth away from destroying the world economy 15 months ago needs to have their heads examined.
So I'm with Bill Clinton in being one of the few people who are more impressed with Obama's actual Presidency than his 2008 campaign. Having watched the America I know decline my entire life, my expectations from a President have become remarkably low, so the fact that Obama managed to avoid a depression, funnel through nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus with virtually no sign of the corruption that is usually endemic with such government outlays, and steer between the icebergs of the double-dip recessions that usually come after financial crises even as a scandalously obstructionist opposition party worked every step of the way to destroy him strikes me as nothing short of incredible.
So yes, the bar on "achievement" in the America of the last 30 years is low, and I'm frankly lukewarm on Obama's top first-term achievement--the health career--because I don't believe it will come within a time zone of working as advertised. But the aforementioned tidal wave of unwavering opposition Obama faced at every juncture is what makes his overall accomplishments noteworthy, and it's eyebrow-raising to say the least that otherwise intelligent media voices are discounting this recalcitrant Republican opposition entirely and shrugging off Obama's ability to work across the aisle...as if it's his fault.
I can honestly say I'm embarrassed to live in Des Moines after reading last weekend's Des Moines Register editorial endorsing Mitt Romney for President. It was without a shadow of a doubt the worst endorsement editorial I've ever read. The Mudville Gazette could have done a better job, even when it comes to defending the indefensible in the form of a Romney Presidency. The Register's argument was that even though Republican Congressional leaders were primarily responsible for an unprecedented level of gridlock to an extent that the country was hours away for selling off national parks to avoid liquidation, their level of partisan terrorism should be rewarded by voting out the guy who they refused to deal with and trade him in for somebody they could deal with, even though they conceded their ideas were wrongheaded. Huh?
Previously sane political reporter Bob Woodward advanced a similar if more subtle narrative in his book last summer. It's a shocking calculus that offers a winning blueprint for all future opposition parties if they know a compliant press corps will ultimately reward them for their intransigence. Rather than rewarding a political party who said publicly and without hesitation that their top priority for the next two years was defeating the President, the hacks and imbeciles of the Des Moines Register editorial board should be demanding that voters ram this cyclops in the eye with a battering ram until it's knocked it into the sea. It never occurred to me that anybody outside of Fox News would be making this argument, especially a renowned liberal paper like the Register, and the fact that they've discovered a level of political cynicism that even I haven't come to terms to with is quite a dubious achievement.
The downward trajectory of the nation and the declining ability of anybody in Washington to reverse it has kept me from casting a ballot "enthusiastically" for anybody since my first and only vote for Senator Paul Wellstone in 1996. But in this case, I will get a lot of value out of voting for "revenge". Obama actually made a throwaway line on the campaign trail on Friday telling the crowd that "voting is the best revenge", which Romney seized upon and built a straw man about in his weekend rallies, but Obama's remark inadvertently described the mindset which I'll have when walking into the voting booth on Tuesday. And frankly, any American who isn't voting with vengeance in mind towards the Congressional leaders who were a hair's breadth away from destroying the world economy 15 months ago needs to have their heads examined.
posted by Mark at 10:31 PM
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