The President is not just another man. The presidency is as close to a secular "higher power" as we have. We might even think of it as a trinity, consisting of the Office of the Presidency (the father), the person (the son), and the ineffable and ever-changing nature of the relationship between those three bodies and the nation as a whole (the holy spirit). The person, much like Jesus of Nazareth to the Christians, is both a divine embodiment of the Office of the Presidency and wholly one of us. As such, the President is a reflection of us. He can only give what we are willing to receive. He can only teach us insofar as we are willing to learn. He can only shepherd us where we are willing to go. We may not expect more from him than we have made ourselves worthy of.
I am sympathetic to the views being voiced by many of my fellow liberals and progressives today. I, too, am disappointed. I, too, feel hopeless. I, too, wonder whether I can vote for Obama in 2012 - or whether I will even vote at all. But I do not, for one, single, solitary moment regret my vote, nor any of the time and energy I spent working for the election of Barack Obama in 2008. I do not believe that he has let me down personally just because I haven't gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it. I do not care to Monday-morning quarterback about which candidate may or may not have fared better under these circumstances.
If anything, I blame myself. I, like many, many people I know, did not have our president's back in 2010. We rested on our laurels, content to have put our candidate in the White House two years earlier, somehow believing that our efforts in 2008 would automatically bring about all of the changes we were dreaming of. We were tired. It had been a long eight years and an arduous campaign. We breathed a deep sigh of relief and never reengaged. I, for one, ceased nearly all political activism and awareness for about a year. I barely lifted a finger during the health care debate, except for the occasional futile argument with family and friends on Facebook.
Meanwhile, the President was actually doing shit. For two years he battled the tyranny of the minority in the United States Senate, where the 111th session of Congress set an all-time record for use of the filibuster. Then, in 2010, we let a bunch of ideological extremists infiltrate the halls of Congress. Off-year elections are a pain in the ass to begin with, but this one seemed even more so, what with the proliferation of downright idiotic candidates vomiting whatever inaccurate and irrelevant bullshit about the constitution or the founding fathers that they'd heard from some right-wing radio loony (usually Glenn Beck) that morning. Unfortunately, we let enough of them into office to seriously impact the ability of the president to accomplish anything at all. And now we're all sad and disappointed that Obama didn't find a way to get us what we wanted. Well what a bunch of whiny little bitches we are.
Republicans in the United States Congress have just successfully executed a massive-scale, hostage-taking, extortion scheme. Now you can call that "negotiating" if you want and you can bemoan Obama's failed strategy, but that's a bit like saying you failed at parenting because a gang of thugs just crashed through your door, held their guns to your daughter's head and demanded that you blow each one of them unless you want to clean little Suzy's brains off the floor later. You'd do it. You'd do more than that if need be. No amount of good parenting before the incident could have changed a single thing about the outcome. You were going to blow those fuckers one way or another.
But that's all beside the point. Look...it is our nature, as liberals, to prefer decent human beings over the alternative. When given a choice, we will always choose introspection over bluster, compassion over self-interest, humanity over greed, kindness over toughness, and rationality over insanity. This is who we are. We can't help it. If we changed, we'd be...well, we wouldn't be liberals anymore. This is why we will raise our children to be decent and compassionate human beings even though we know that they'd probably be better off if we raised them to be greedy, self-centered little motherfuckers. We just can't do it.
And so, we cannot turn around and say, "Goddammit, why are you so fucking nice?" to the guy we elected because he represents what's best in us. Even if we pretend for a moment that there was something Obama could have done differently - that he could have played dirtier or focused more on the politics rather than on the reality and on what was best for the nation - we cannot ask him to suddenly become that guy. Every time he stepped up to the mic, I found myself hoping against hope that he would open up a can of whoop-ass and stop trying to be so goddamned reasonable and civilized (in stark contrast to the disingenuous, grandstanding histrionics of the GOP).
But that's exactly what sets him apart from the GOP. He refuses to do it. He refuses to stoop to the level of a retarded chinchilla in order to score a few points. What's more, the only time he is genuinely dishonest is when he's actually trying to give those assholes a little bit of cover by pretending that they aren't completely full of shit and that their positions aren't as harmful as they actually are. Republicans get out there and say that Obama is trying to bring down the Republic with socialism. Obama says, "Well, we have some disagreements, but we're working in good faith to close the gap." He's giving them a chance. He's leading by example. Again, you can call that weak, but I happen to be proud that I helped elect someone who won't actively lower the discourse.
If the nation won't let someone govern with dignity and self-respect, fuck the nation, not the president. We can all tweet and post and blog to our heart's content about what Obama should've, could've done (or what someone else would've done), but maybe we should get off our asses and actively do something about it. We know what's happening to our country, but we don't want to sacrifice a damn thing to stop it. We just want to bitch at the president. We did the right thing in 2008, but an election does not a revolution make. When's the fucking revolution already?
