Rush Limbaugh is onto something when he says that President Obama will “fail.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that those of us who voted for President Obama saw in him the stuff that good national leaders are made of. I think that after eight years of Bush, the majority of the country was looking for something other (or more) than a mere political leader. We wished for a president that would go inside our stale political system, only to return to the periphery. We believed that Obama was the guy. That’s why we struggled when comparing Obama to Kennedy or Clinton or to any other politician – deep down we thought of Obama as more like M.L.K or Mandela, or maybe even Oprah.
I think that those of us who voted for Obama had good reason. We are the heart of this country – a diverse yet common group of people – looking for someone who could reasonably ‘unite’ America and, as much as possible, the world. We are a group of rational idealists, who feel in our soul that unless something radical… happens in America and the world – across all of its dimensions– things are going to get worse. We felt that things are simply out of whack when we elected Obama last year.
In Obama we saw a great leader (not merely a good politician) who could make things right. “We the people” bought into the idea that Obama could make change come. In fact, this is probably why Obama prematurely won the Nobel Peace Prize. Because we aren’t the only one’s who feel the need for a revolution of sorts, the rest of the world is also looking for a just and peaceful leader as well.
The problem is that Barack Obama is merely a politician. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good politician, who is doing, I believe, the best that he can. But he’s no MLK, and he’ll never be.
I’m not so sure that Obama intended to deceive us; but I don’t know that it matters either. In the end, we tricked ourselves. Anyway, unlike Limbaugh I have hope that Obama will succeed in his political endeavors, and I think that he will. Yet, Obama will fail to do what we thought we really elected him to do: to lead a march for the people, to be our moral/spiritual leader. For this job requires someone else: someone with the charisma of the Obama who ran for office.
color me confused.
i think this misrepresents what a lot of people thought about when they voted for president obama. you keep using the first person plural, lumping seemingly everyone in with you on these points. did anyone really think that he could “unite the country?” i viewed his election as the democratic return to power to fix a lot of things that the bush white house messed up. we KNEW he wasn’t going to be popular with the 46% of the country that voted for mccain and the millions and millions of people that tune into fox news daily. the point of electing a democrat into office for a lot of people was as simple as making sure sarah palin wouldn’t enter the oval office for at least four years.
i also certainly did not vote for obama “to lead a march for the people, to be our moral/spiritual leader.” that sounds like kim jong-il shit. why does a human need another human to be a moral/spiritual leader? i hoped he could change things WITHOUT being radical — by reopening the dialogue with parts of the world that bush closed.
the title of the article is “why obama will fail.” yet the last paragraph claims, “i think he will [succeed in his political endeavors].” again, color me confused.
November 1, 2009
“Mr. President, last fall, you were elected. Not General McChrystal, not Secretary Gates, not another Bushian Drone of a politician. You. On the Change Ticket. On the pitch that all politicians are not created equal..
You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our economy than the cost of supply for 35,000 new troops. Nothing will do more to slow economic recovery. You might as well shoot the revivified auto industry or embrace John Boehner Health Care Reform and Spray-Tan Reimbursement.
You know this, Mr. President: we cannot afford this war. Nothing makes less sense to our status in the world than for us to re-up as occupiers of Afghanistan and for you to look like you were unable to extricate yourself from a Military Chinese Finger Puzzle left for you by Bush and Cheney and the rest of Halliburton’s hench-men.
And most of all, and those of us who have watched these first nine months trust both your judgment and the fact you know this, Mr. President: unless you are exactly right, we cannot afford this war. For if all else is even, and everything from the opinion of the generals to the opinion of the public is even, we cannot afford to send these troops back into that quagmire for second tours, or thirds, or fourths, or fifths.
WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS ETHICALLY, Sir. The country has, for eight shameful years, forgotten its MORAL compass and its world purpose. And here is your chance to reassert that there is, in fact, American Exceptionalism. We are better. We know when to stop making our troops suffer, in order to make our generals happy.
YOU, SIR, CALLED FOR CHANGE, FOR THE BETTER WAY, FOR THE SAFETY OF OUR CITIZENS INCLUDING THE CITIZENS BEING WASTED IN WAR – FOR THE SAKE OF WAR, FOR A REASSERTING OF OUR MORAL FORCE. And we listened. And now you must listen to yourself.”
-KEITH OLBERMANN
MSNBC
The truth is John Dodig, that there is a part of me that also finds the idea of equating a politician to a moral leader somewhat perplexing/annoying/plain stupid. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the majority of folks who voted for Obama wanted to believe that Obama would be SOMETHING of a moral leader. This seems to be true, regardless of how you and I feel on the surface. A close reading of Olbermann shows that Obama ran on – but seems to be swaying from – a commitment to morality. And the existing disconnect between moral rhetoric and moral action, in part, at least, is what enables Olbermann to hold Obama accountable.
Check out Olbermann’s entire article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34209743/