I've been following the going on in the lame duck session and getting depressed over the recent compromise reached with the Republican/blue dog coalition.
So, while sitting on the sofa with my wife I stated "Obama isn't a fighter". She asked "Do we need a fighter?"
That remark got me to thinking....
(more below the fold)
Yes, I was there for the first announcement and have donated time and money every since.
So what did I want out of him? Here is a link to the text:
http://www.barackobama.com/...
We all made this journey for a reason. It's humbling, but in my heart I know you didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be. In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope. In the face of a politics that's shut you out, that's told you to settle, that's divided us for too long, you believe we can be one people, reaching for what's possible, building that more perfect union. [...]
Unity.
It was here we learned to disagree without being disagreeable - that it's possible to compromise so long as you know those principles that can never be compromised; and that so long as we're willing to listen to each other, we can assume the best in people instead of the worst.
Nothing here about fighting the Republicans.
All of us know what those challenges are today - a war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We've heard them. We've talked about them for years.
What's stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What's stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics - the ease with which we're distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.
Again, nothing about fighting the Republicans.
Read the text. His campaign was about "transforming America" and bringing us together.
Here and there, there IS a flicker of hope:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), increasingly a voice of reason and moderation within his own GOP, gave President Obama credit on Sunday for reaching out to Republicans, breaking with the party-line criticisms that the administration is not listening at all to the opposition. He also warned his colleagues against becoming the "party of no," saying that voters will start to hold Republicans accountable if they don't offer actual solutions.
"Now, I think since the election, my understanding is that the meetings that President Obama has had have certainly had an element of reaching out," Lugar told Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union." "And I think that has been appreciated. And as I indicated earlier, I think that perhaps Sen. McConnell, our Republican leader, and the president may see more eye to eye on how we ought to wind up this lame duck session than maybe do others in this situation."
He is never been about winning a war between competing ideologies.
Note: not everyone sees it the way that we do:
http://www.gallup.com/...
Latest Gallup poll: 47-45, with 78 percent among Democrats and 83 percent among liberal Democrats. And as of right now, he is just outside the margin of error in better poll position than either President Reagan or President Clinton was at this time in his administration:
So, yes, I know; "compromiser in chief" doesn't sound very exciting.
But I am going to wait to see how it turns out.
Besides: it isn't as if he has gotten nothing done in the first two years.
One can argue to the contrary: