a brief note on politics.
A good part of my day in the office is spent gchatting with a particular coworker of mine. I may have mentioned him offhandedly in conversations as “my cynical coworker” – a guy I usually have stubborn (and often pretty ridiculous) debates with. A recurring exchange we have usually goes like this:
Him: This country is going to shit. I’m moving to Canada.
Me: Oh, it’s not that bad.
Him: I can never catch up to my peers because I’m not white or bred into a rich family. It’s not a meritocracy. The corporations run everything, the American public is full of Republican idiots, there’s no national health insurance, and our public education is terrible. Obama’s not going to get reelected in 2012. The Republicans are going to get back in full control and Sarah Palin is going to become President.
Me: Holy shit.
Him: True story.
Me: I don’t think Sarah Palin would even get nominated. Only a crazy minority has any legitimate respect for her.
Him: The Republicans are getting more and more extremist. The whole country is in decline.
Et cetera, et cetera.
I’m not a fan of predicting the future in politics and I’m particularly not a fan of doom-and-gloom scenarios. So when this exchange pops up I try to resist the negativity as much as possible – try to focus on positive aspects, maintain faith in the resilience of individual people. I think it’s fair to say that in general, I’m an optimist. I’m not naive enough to think America’s going to be on top forever, and I’m pretty cognizant of its shortcomings. But all in all, I think it’s an extraordinary place to be. I’ve spent a good number of years researching and writing about free speech globally and the lengths that some people have to go through just in order to say something, write something, distribute something that does not agree with those in power – and I’m always amazed to look at the United States again and marvel at how comparatively far our system reaches to protect that right of free expression. This strange animal we call democracy has spurred innovation and debate and free flows of ideas that other places have only dreamt of. And I would never have thought that by 2008 we would have the collective willingness to elect a black man to our highest office. The American people, varied and divided as they are, continue to move forward. With all our faults, this mass of people of varying color and creed and age and class is still driving forward.
And then came Massachusetts.
Like most others, I hadn’t paid very much attention to the Massachusetts senatorial elections until after the damage had been done. Scott Brown, albeit an energizing force alongside a stiff and distant Martha Coakley, took away the 60th likely vote for health reform and the barrier to filibustering in the Senate. It’s not so much Scott Brown himself – I’ll admit, besides his parentage of a boring former American Idol contestant and his opposition to federal health care, I don’t know a lot about the guy. It’s the aftermath of the elections and the deluge of anger that started to get to me.
The other good part of my workday (besides gchatting with the coworker) is spent listening to news radio. In the aftermath of Massachusetts my favorite radio host started taking calls from voters asking why they had voted the way they did, and eventually expanded the call-in question to “What are you angry about?”
I’ve been well aware of the dimming faith in President Obama nationwide and the disillusionment towards his administration one year down the road. Until Massachusetts, I had thought that these feelings were confined to the crazies in the tea party movement and a few disgruntled Midwesterners who never really understood what Obama stood for in the first place. Maybe this was naive and ill informed, because the outpouring of calls made to the radio station brought out angry person after angry person, pointing fingers at Obama, at Congress, at the structure of the country. Out of these were story after story of people who voted for Obama and “voted for change,” then came to some epiphany months down the road that Obama wasn’t going to magically solve all of their problems, and completely turned on him. Last year, Obama was touted by every news outlet as the “new hope” in Luke Skywalker fashion. People poured their hopes, no matter what they were or how much they may have diverged from what Obama actually pledged to do, into this man because he told them he was for change. Now every mention of the President is preceded by words like “beleaguered” or “embattled” with constant reminders of slipping poll numbers. Fatigue over lambasting the Bush administration for all of our current faults combined with a collective short term memory have pushed blame onto the current administration. There are times when this shining beacon of democracy suddenly seems gnarled and grotesque. Are Obama’s policies and administration deserving of criticism? Of course. Are they deserving of this vitriolic and largely blind rage threatening to completely reverse the political pendulum after only one year in office? No. Despite the Obama Administration’s shortcomings and promises that have not materialized (not to mention constant dickering around by Congress), I maintain that the primary source of disappointment by the American public is largely the Americans themselves that expected so much out of just one person. Not to say that the Obama campaign didn’t capitalize on this during election year. But really – what did you expect? And what’s more – what did you expect in the first year?
I’m still an optimist. I think that the next three years, difficult as they are sure to be, will still produce progress. But my faith in the voting populace has abruptly declined. Maybe it should never have been so high in the first place. The shrill protests of the tea party movement sound louder, and the former Alaskan governor’s face smiling on Fox as Glenn Beck verbally ejaculates all over her seems that much more ominous.
If there is one Obama criticism I will agree with wholeheartedly, it is that he needs to exert a much more forceful leadership, and he needs to do it fast. The State of the Union Address is this Wednesday, and I will be watching and hoping – but not too hard – that he will do just that. He has to. He has to.