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I'm voting for the real President Obama.
Sep. 10th, 2012 12:11 pmRegarding President Obama. I always knew it would take more than one term to undo the damage of President Bush. I'm not naive.
I followed what Bush was doing. Two wars. Massive deregulation leading to total corruption (I'm looking at you, Cheney and Haliburton). No bid contracts--fundamentally cash giveaways. The insanity of cutting taxes while wildly spending on wars and unfunded drug benefits for seniors and NCLB. Jobs vanishing overseas and corporations paid to do it. Torture and extraordinary rendition. Stomping over the UN and military advice. The Patriot Act and total disregard for human rights. A staggering mess even before the recession. People don't realize, but most of the US economy fell into a recession around 2005. The housing bubble hid the fact that every other area of our economy, aside from housing, had floundered because of outsourcing.
Now we have a solid indicator of economic improvement, according the conservative Brookings Institute: the return of US manufacturing, mostly the auto industry and peripheral businesses.
That's Obama's doing. And the government is making money on the deal.
This pushes us away from what caused the recession in the first place--and again, those credit swaps merely triggered the collapse of an artificial housing bubble, revealing the weak foundations beyond.
We wanted overnight change. We got slow, solid change.
We wanted a crusading hero. We got a pragmatic diplomat.
I knew when I watched his inauguration parade, saw the troops parade by him, that he would be a military president. Maybe it was his respect for those soldiers. I knew those would be his successes. I wasn't surprised by the death of Osama Bin Laden and the end of our involvement in Iraq.
I worried about that 2008 slogan, "Hope." Heartening. And when we hope, we're capable of more: everything goes better. But "Hope" also made him a blank screen for people to project their own hopes and dreams, no matter how varied and disparate. And sure enough, the Democrats wanted it all, yesterday, and pulled in a million different directions. That slogan didn't bring the Democrats together on a single agenda. His goals, like the closing of Guantanamo Bay for example, were undermined by the defection of Democrats who *hoped* he would to accomplish *their* projected dreams.
It's time to vote for the real Obama.
- The fiscally cautious man who can build a stimulus bill while making so many tiny little cuts, he offsets a third of its cost -- and yet not a soul complains about those cuts.
- The president who listens to the advice of his military advisers and takes bold, decisive action.
- The president who's willing to seize the opportunity to pass health care, even knowing the Republicans would wreak revenge.
- The dignified diplomat who represents us with such credit throughout the world, I feel proud to see him step off of Air Force One.
- He's a man who comes from where we're from, with student loans, a beater car, and junky college furniture.
He's one of us.
I followed what Bush was doing. Two wars. Massive deregulation leading to total corruption (I'm looking at you, Cheney and Haliburton). No bid contracts--fundamentally cash giveaways. The insanity of cutting taxes while wildly spending on wars and unfunded drug benefits for seniors and NCLB. Jobs vanishing overseas and corporations paid to do it. Torture and extraordinary rendition. Stomping over the UN and military advice. The Patriot Act and total disregard for human rights. A staggering mess even before the recession. People don't realize, but most of the US economy fell into a recession around 2005. The housing bubble hid the fact that every other area of our economy, aside from housing, had floundered because of outsourcing.
Now we have a solid indicator of economic improvement, according the conservative Brookings Institute: the return of US manufacturing, mostly the auto industry and peripheral businesses.
That's Obama's doing. And the government is making money on the deal.
This pushes us away from what caused the recession in the first place--and again, those credit swaps merely triggered the collapse of an artificial housing bubble, revealing the weak foundations beyond.
We wanted overnight change. We got slow, solid change.
We wanted a crusading hero. We got a pragmatic diplomat.
I knew when I watched his inauguration parade, saw the troops parade by him, that he would be a military president. Maybe it was his respect for those soldiers. I knew those would be his successes. I wasn't surprised by the death of Osama Bin Laden and the end of our involvement in Iraq.
I worried about that 2008 slogan, "Hope." Heartening. And when we hope, we're capable of more: everything goes better. But "Hope" also made him a blank screen for people to project their own hopes and dreams, no matter how varied and disparate. And sure enough, the Democrats wanted it all, yesterday, and pulled in a million different directions. That slogan didn't bring the Democrats together on a single agenda. His goals, like the closing of Guantanamo Bay for example, were undermined by the defection of Democrats who *hoped* he would to accomplish *their* projected dreams.
It's time to vote for the real Obama.
- The fiscally cautious man who can build a stimulus bill while making so many tiny little cuts, he offsets a third of its cost -- and yet not a soul complains about those cuts.
- The president who listens to the advice of his military advisers and takes bold, decisive action.
- The president who's willing to seize the opportunity to pass health care, even knowing the Republicans would wreak revenge.
- The dignified diplomat who represents us with such credit throughout the world, I feel proud to see him step off of Air Force One.
- He's a man who comes from where we're from, with student loans, a beater car, and junky college furniture.
He's one of us.