Oh you, Barack Hussein Obama. Do you have any idea how much I miss Candidate Obama much? We had such a wonderful ride together from the 2004 Democratic National Convention until the summer of 2009, didn't we?
/le extremely large, American, non-French sigh.
I don't doubt you, sir. I don't doubt you, dear President. I just want you to be who you're supposed to be: the 21st century transformative figure in American politics that requires true and genuine leadership, a la LBJ and/or FDR. I know you can do this. I know you can!
GODDAMNIT ALL! Try, for fuck's sake, will you?! Will you?!
I've been told time and time again that President Obama is not my boyfriend, and I'm cool with that. I never expected him to be; that's effing stupid. That would be like expecting my high school posters of Matt Dillon and Michael J. Fox to suddenly come alive and talk to me.
(Which, for the record, they haven't done. And I support that.)
But to disagree with the fact that Candidate Obama and President Obama are two completely different folk is to either be disingenuous or seriously uninformed. The person that me, slinkerwink, and icebergslim supported during the primaries, and the actual man we received after the 2008 general election, are two completely different entities.
I am not sure about how slink and slim reacted to the January 20, 2009 Presidential Inauguration of one Barack H. Obama, but I cried like a little, bitty baby. I mean, fuck it man, I wept! We're talking snot bubbles and tons of Kleenex and calling everyone I knew to report how historic the day was and shit like that.
You are talking to a girl here who once had the gmail address of (check it) "barackismycopilot".
Oh yeah, I was a "bot". I was an enthusiast and a worshipper and a clapper and a "give it time"-er and all of that.
All of that. All of it. Check my comment and diary history if you don't believe me.
Before you were elected, President Obama, it's not like I didn't realize or accept that you were a centrist. I knew it then and I know it now. What did not occur to me, however, was you "compromising" 24/7 or "capitulating" more than a NYC defense lawyer or you "giving away the entire ice cream truck when you're handin' out the popsicles for free".
Until the 2008 elections, I don't think I consciously realized/recognized that being a Democratic centrist was exactly the same as being a spineless Blue Dog.
Unfortunately, Mr. President, thanks to you, I now consciously equate the two all the time. It's sad, really.
I figured you were gonna do in practice what you said you were gonna do in theory: bring an entirely different, realistic, completely radical approach to modern American politics. I figured that you'd piss off a lot of people, and I was prepared to have your back on that one.
I was. I WAS! I was prepared to go to bat for you.
And if Candidate Obama had shown up, I would have very much done that.
Sometimes, I see shades of Candidate O. Like in Lily Ledbetter, and The Matthew Shephard Act, and stuff like that. That makes me giggle and smile.
But all too often these days, I am saddened that you've listened to your devilishly Beltway-esque aides, who inform you of things that are
- patently untrue, and/or
- relative to your powerful ego.
It's pathetic, that a girl like me should write this diary to a man she not only believed to be transformative, but to be all that and a bag 'o chips. President Obama, I really did have a school-girl crush on you, in the sense that I was SO excited that you were elected that I sorta forgot why you were elected.
Republicans want to eat you for breakfast, Mr. President. In extreme contrast, your base on the left just wants to have breakfast with you.
Please don't confuse the two, Mr. Obama. Please don't neglect to be the person all Democrats would like for you to be.