This is just one essay that puts it out there:
www.nytimes.com/…
But I have heard the whisper growing, including from no less than Ralph Nader, and PULEEEEZE don’t get me started, but here’s the article. You decide for yourself.
www.commondreams.org/…
So, let’s start with that first article.
President Obama, now is the time to start talking.
Well, I think he talked eloquently and with much knowledge and empathy for 8 long years. So the idea that this would be the time he really need to “start to talking” kind of REALLY bugged me.
I appreciate the instinct to hold back, to follow the keep-quiet-about-the-new-guy tradition of former presidents. But these are not traditional times. They are unprecedented, and frankly, unpresidential.
Really, we needed the word “frankly” here?
Mr. Obama, you are the president who got up and sang “Amazing Grace” after the Charleston, S.C., killings. You are the president who shed tears in public after Sandy Hook. Now we are a country troubled by the looming possibility of a constitutional crisis, and hate groups are claiming the president as theirs. We need your voice. There is not a saner, more trustworthy opinion that many of us would rather hear.
Yeah, well. Can’t disagree with this.
I recognize and respect your deliberate approach to navigating these fraught times, but this relentless subtlety has become wearisome. Mr. Obama, now is not the time to follow the keep-quiet rules while the new administration plays moral equivocator to a much aghast nation.
How can we say we claim to respect Obama’s judgment and then turn around after a comma and say “this relentless subtlety has become wearisome?
I love that, after you posted on Twitter about the violence in Charlottesville, Va., you set a record for the most-liked tweet. But my joy at the news of your weighing in was complicated by your using a quotation, even one from Nelson Mandela. I looked to you for your good words. I’ll keep waiting because I know they will be worth it. But where are they?
OK, so Nelson Mandela isn’t quite good enough?
I found myself yelling at the screen, and into the universe: “Barack! Where are you?”
SIGH. I get that. Don’t we all wish he was at our command and demand once again? But, out time for that has past. And Joni Mitchell whispers in my ear, “you don’t know what you got till it’s gone.” Lord knows, I saw many here rip him from ear lobe to big toe on MANY an occasion. Some was fair and just disagreement, and some was spoilt baby stuff.
But, then, oh then, oh then, oh, then here’s the stinger and what really broke my heart.
As a black Southern woman, I have grown accustomed to navigating a many-voiced universe. In the past months, however, I have felt keenly the absence of two voices: the collective sound of my sane Republican friends calling for inquiry and, more important, the voice of my president.
Yes, the black woman who wrote this is missing a president as much as this white woman is. And I FEEL her heart break. And then this:
My generation graduated from college, got our first jobs and became adults all under the auspices of that truth. We learned to experience politics through the lens of your eloquent presence in the White House. In this respect, you raised us. So we are unaccustomed to all of this wildness. Just because we’re grown doesn’t mean we don’t need to hear from the man who brought us up.
This just chokes me to my eyeballs.
Still, how much can we ask from Barack Obama? Where is the balance where we thank him for the blessings he bestowed on us and allow him to follow his own path?
Fact is, many of us feel somewhat desperate and longing for what we had, just---what was it, only a year ago? And I don’t blame this writer for her desperate plea, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair either, nor do I think Barack Obama can save us.
I think he can help. And I think he will.
But, we had our chance to continue his legacy, if not the brightness of his star. And that didn’t work out, and I couldn’t be less interested in discussing why. We’ll never all agree about this, and to me it’s water over the dam, and I literally get the cooties these days reading posts that still want to argue about it.
Now we will have to go on without his leadership as we once had it. I think we will always have his partnership. No small thing.
I pushed the fair limits here in what I have quoted, but I would suggest you all read this. It’s a plea we all understand and yet one I think we really have to think about---as in what’s “fair use” for Obama?
YES, he will long be an important part of our party, but I do believe we need to leave it up to him as to when he wants to step in and how. I think, no matter where we disagreed with him, he’s earned his stripes when it comes to good political judgement.
As for Nader’s article, read it for yourself if you care to. I did, but I have a hard time with him whining about Obama, and I’ll just leave it at that.
Last but not least. Oh God, I miss Barack Obama as my president. That’s not even political. It’s straight from the heart.