[img]583|left|Eric L. Wattree||no_popup[/img]President Obama is in trouble. How do I know? As one of his biggest supporters, even I am beginning to wonder if I got too caught up in the hype.
While I’m still excited over the historic significance of his Presidency, the gathering threat that he may be remembered as an ineffectual kiss-up to the Republican Party is beginning to tarnish its luster.
That should come as very bad news to the President. If a supporter of my unfettered loyalty has begun to wonder about him, that means tens of millions are thinking along the same lines. Based on his atrocious handling of both the Republican Party and the healthcare debate, he only has himself to blame.
In the real world, it’s not enough to have good ideas and the eloquence to express them. One must have the backbone to wield power to bring those ideas to fruition. That is the reason for seeking power in the first place. The President doesn’t seem to have the capacity to wield power. He seems to yearn for a utopia in America where everybody is holding hands, singing Kumbaya. We need a little realism here, actually a lot of realism.
The President seems to harbor this burning desire to be loved by everyone. If that’s all he wanted, he should have become an entertainer. In politics, the people are looking for a father figure who is fair, but also bad enough to protect them from harm. President Obama is not demonstrating that capacity. He seems more adept at taking the coward’s way out. Everyone knows the type, the guy who is always running up to the bullies trying to become their best friend so he won’t get beat up.
Losing That Secure Feeling
No one wants a President like that, no matter how much they like him. The people want someone who makes them feel secure and protected. Sure, Obama is intellectual and contemplative, but you can’t think your way out of a whipping when a bully is determined to do it. I know. I’ve tried it with little success.
The irony of Obama’s Presidency is that if he fails in his first term — if he continues the way he is, he will – it’s not going to be because he wasn’t cultured enough or intellectual enough. It will be because he’s not ghetto enough. Turn on your television and try to find a show without someone being busted in the head. You can’t do it, because Americans respect people who are willing to fight for what they believe in.
If he had just a little more ghetto in him, he would have thrown Sen. Joe Lieberman to the wolves 30 seconds after he took the oath of office. If he’d done that, the other Liebercrats who were blocking healthcare reform would have had second thoughts about the consequences of bucking his initiatives. Americans don’t want to be led by Jimmy Stewart. They want John Wayne, a benevolent bully.
Who Is in Charge?
The people want the kind of President who is willing to tell Congress what he wants, draws a line in the sand, then makes it clear to every legislator that they buck the will of the American people at their own peril. Then set up a special task force in the White House dedicated to nothing but educating the people with facts and figures about the self-serving motives of the legislators trying to circumvent their will.
Why shouldn’t the people know about the connection that Joe Lieberman and his wife have with the insurance industry? Provide the people with that information, then let him go before the cameras and try to look sincere. If the White House had that kind of operation, Liebercrats and Republicans alike would have had to check their closets before they decided to buck the President.
Instead, Obama is acting like that Black cop that we in the Black community know so well, the one who is so sensitive about being accused of coddling Black people he goes out of his way to be more insensitive than his colleagues. That is exactly what Obama is doing to his base. He is so fixated on appeasing the Republican base he seems to be totally ignoring his own. As a result, he is turning a blind eye to why he was voted into office in the first place.
What is so unfathomable is that as intelligent as Barack Obama is, he seems to be forgetting that, unlike that Black cop, he has to come back to the community to be re-elected. If he doesn’t spend the next three years undoing the damage he has done to his image, never mind the possibility of losing to a Republican. He may even lose the right to run in the primaries.
The President seems to be working under the assumption that being an aggressive advocate for the people is bad politics. So he has adopted a strategy of trying to win by not losing. That explains why he pointedly has avoided specifically identifying what he wants in a healthcare bill. He seems to feel that by drawing a line in the sand, every element of the bill that’s shot down thereafter constitutes a personal loss to him.
That’s true. That is called having the courage of your convictions. That is why you fight, and hard. He seems to have adopted a strategy of ‘If I don't fight, I won’t have to bear the embarrassment of losing,’ which, by definition, fails the people who elected him.
This is not the time to indulge in political vanity. Save that for the next election season. This is where the rubber meets the road. Now is the time to put the pretty rhetoric aside and fight for the people who believed in him and gave him their vote in the belief that he would fight to protect their interest.
I am sorry to say he is failing to do that, to the sincere disappointment of millions. He promised “a change that we can believe in.” What we are getting is the same old status quo we thought we voted out of fashion, politicians first, then the people, maybe.
Mr. President, I have never dreaded writing any article more than I have this one.
All of my instincts are screaming for me to hang in there with you, but the facts won’t allow it. Every time I go to write a sentence trying to justify your actions, I think about an email I received from a young lady regarding my column. She simply said, “I really hope you're researching the stuff you say in your column because I don’t know much about politics. So I rely on you for my information.” While I would love to give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr. President, my first loyalty must be to people like that young lady.
You need to man up, Mr. President, as we say in the ‘hood. You're looking weak and indecisive. You are allowing people from your own party to thumb their noses at you. You are putting 30,000 of our troops in harm’s way in order to chase 100 Eastside Crips in Afghanistan. You are fighting to pass a healthcare bill that forces the public to buy in, but without a public option. That, in essence, constitutes paying a windfall ransom to the insurance industry in order to protect your image.
You still have time to change your course. You have nothing to lose, everything to gain. The Republicans are not going to like you regardless to what you do. By deciding to go for broke in defense of the American people, you might have time to salvage your image in the eyes of your base.
Your window of opportunity is narrow. At the rate your image has declined in the year since you took office, if you don’t do something fast, by this time next year you’re gonna be typecast as a weak, ineffectual President, both at home and abroad. At that point, you’ll be no more than a caretaker for the next two years until you can be voted out of office. None of your base, including myself, is going to support having a President kiss up to the Republicans for another four years.
Mr. President, I’m convinced that you are a good, intelligent and well-meaning man. I still am pulling for you. But what I’ve related to you here is what many of us call, the actual factuals.
Mr. Wattree may be contacted at wattree@verizon.net
You may learn more about Mr. Wattree at wattree.blogspot.com
Religious bigotry: It’s not that I hate everybody who doesn’t look, think and act like me. It’s just that God does.
