[img]139|left|||no_popup[/img]I want my money back.
What I thought I was getting has turned out not to be as advertised.
It seems like years ago that I oh-so-naively sent more than $1,000 to Barack Obama’s campaign of hope and change. And many, many people whom I assumed were mean spirited – or just plain wrong – told me I had lost my mind. They called then-candidate Obama an empty suit, with lofty rhetoric. A short-term Senator, he was labeled, who wasn’t ready to govern.
In my opinion, Tom Daschle had long held the honor as the emptiest suit in the Democratic Party leadership – and he wasn’t running – so I thought I was making a safe and furthermore wise investment in my future. I ignored the jibes, eschewed the labels, and blithely clicked ‘Donate.’
I guard my money pretty closely. So before I clicked or sent a penny, I took it upon myself to read the books, listen to the speeches and watch the debates. When I cast my vote, but even more importantly when I sent my hard earned non-tax-deductible donation to the folks at the Obama campaign, I assumed I’d get a fair return on my money. Turns out, I’d have been better off investing in Goldman Sachs.
I understand governing vastly differs from campaigning, but here’s what I expected for my contribution:
A President who was devoted to health “care” reform – who supported a single-payer system or at least a public option – not one who supported Massachusetts-like individual mandates (I said no thanks to Hillary Clinton in the primaries for this – among other – reasons), or a massive transfer of wealth to insurance companies under the guise of “subsidizing” health insurance for the poor.
Look Who Is Getting Help
A President who supported the stringent regulation of Wall Street. I fully expected former President George W. Bush and former Goldman Sachs chief executive (then Treasury Secretary) Henry Paulson to bail out Wall Street. The Republicans have made a mint for corporations with the privatization of profits and the socialization of risk. What I didn’t expect was a follow up act from a this new President promising “hope” and “change” – only to watch him throw taxpayer dollars at every outstretched corporate hand from the banks to the automakers to the insurance industry.
A President who would pull out of the ill-advised Iraq war, and make the hard decision not to have the United States become a country whose empire dies in the bowels of Afghanistan like so many others before us.
A President who sticks to his promise of transparency. Americans still don’t know what’s going on in Guantanamo, or where our military tortured people, who they were and how many. We still haven’t seen the rest of the pictures from Abu Ghraib, and President Hope and Change is now fighting so that we never do. He also won’t disclose who visits him in the White House and when. Given the nature of our current healthcare legislation, it was no surprise to learn through leaks that top visitors have included unregistered lobbyist Tom Daschle (whose formerly empty suit is now bursting at the seams with healthcare industry cash) and a bevy of health insurance executives. I assume the rest are Wall Street executives and bank lobbyists or the heads of labor unions – but if the White House refuses to release that information, I will continue to assume the worst.
Who Is Articulate?
I want my money back because I thought I was going to get a President who was purported to be a well-educated Ivy League graduate and gifted orator. Instead, our bumbling President, despite five network interviews this weekend, could not seem to give one articulate answer to softball inquiries. His audacity, no longer manifesting as hope, instead took the form of dodging basic questions, as he contented himself by explaining that his policies (whatever they may be) were far too difficult and complex to convey to the American people during the course of the five interviews he requested.
Often people ask me why I watch the quadrennial Republican national convention, read many conservative columnists, or even take in the occasional conservative television or radio talk show. The answer is because, for the most part, the speakers are honest. Most Republicans will tell you up front that they don’t support labor unions, or that they do support big business. They will honestly admit that they believe taxes on the wealthy should be small, and that trickle-down, supply-side economics are a good thing. Read a book by Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan or David Frum and you know where they stand. You may not agree, but they’re hardly touting solutions for the little guy.
The older I get, the more I realize that Democrats are just good liars. (I’ll admit Republicans do lie about things like smaller government and balanced budgets). They claim to be for the average Joe, the government worker, the low-income student, the union line gal, the poor, the disenfranchised. You name your minority group – and they claim to support that group. It sounds very populist and warm and fuzzy. I like warm and fuzzy in mainstream movies, and in politics. So I sent my money.
What I got were an assortment of broken promises in the form of conservative policies and corporate giveaways wrapped in pseudo-egalitarian rhetoric.
Goldman Sachs contributed upwards of a half million dollars, and they got all sorts of consideration from the administration (not to mention a plethora of in house jobs). My paltry sum, merely one five hundredth of that, earned me heartburn and headaches.
My mother always said you get what you pay for. She was right.
Jessica Gadsden has been controversial since the day she discovered her inner soapbox. She excoriated the cheerleaders on the editorial page of her high school paper, transferred from a co-educational university to a women's college to protest the gender-biased curfew policy, published a newspaper in law school that raked the dean over the coals with (among other things) the headline, “Law School Supports Drug Use”—and that was before she got serious about speaking out. Progressive doesn't begin to define her political views. A reformed lawyer, she is a fulltime novelist who writes under a pseudonym, of course. A Brooklyn native, she divided her college years between Hampton University and Smith.
Ms. Gadsden’s essays appear every other Tuesday. She may be contacted at www.pennermag.com
