As I touched on in yesterday's post, I've been with Obama from the beginning. Initially, I hoped he WOULDN'T run in '08 because as a matter of principle, people should finish what they set out to do, and he was only two years into his first Senate term. Plus, if you're applying to lead the free world, it's nice to have as much political experience as possible.
But once the Iowa caucuses approached, I concluded Obama was the best the Democrats had to offer this time around, and I threw myself passionately behind his campaign. I read "The Audacity of Hope." I deeply lamented that I was not 22 and a senior in college with mountains of free time I could dedicate to volunteering to his historic campaign. I sent money instead, in small, non-sequential bills in unmarked briefcases. And I devoured every piece of campaign news I could get my jaws around. Shoot, I went through eleven computer monitors last calendar year alone.
All hysterical witticisms aside, I glommed on to Obama for three main reasons: future Supreme Court appointments, the need to repudiate eight years of Republican mis-rule, and most fiercely because I believed BHO was a different kind of politician. A guy who might follow his conscience, not his ideology. A guy who invited competing points of view instead of squashing dissent. A guy with some gray matter.
I still believe most of that. But a measure of disappointment might be settling in over the land as the president is forced to put his money where his mouth may or may not be.
Try these Google search results on for size.
"disappointed liberal blogger" yields 41,100 hits.
"buyer's remorse Obama": 195,000
"disappointed Democrats": 242,000
"disillusioned Democrats": 261,000
"disillusioned with Obama": 608,000
"disappointed Obama": 4,060,000
Granted, the last number just barely covers every Republican left in America, so it's no smoking AK-47 (used for deer hunting exclusively). But you get my drift. People all over them internets sure is gettin' antsy. What if our Dear Leader is just another politician, clothed in conciliatory biracial Rorsachness? Let's do some more fun irrandom searches, and pretend they're useful.
(Before we do that, please acknowledge that nobody in the history of the world has typed a paragraph even remotely resembling the one you just read.)
"pleased liberal blogger" yields 40,200 hits.
"no buyer's remorse Obama": 48,100.
"pleased Democrats": 1,850,000
"energized Democrats": 2,170,000
"satisfied with Obama": 3,370,000
"pleased Obama": 4,760,000
Interesting. A media narrative that's been flowing as a persistent undercurrent lately is how Obama supporters are, well, disillusioned en masse after six months of his administration. Since journalists are trained (in J-School, by their editors, by the ratings) to seek out conflict and report it, not harmony, color me unsurprised. The numbers don't bear out a nationwide backlash against the President. Yet.
Still, all that near-nonsense having been said, I do find myself channeling my inner Dennis Green, and wondering if HE IS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS! (Repeat until self is worked into a lather.) I mean, he cuddled up to antiwar protesters, built the foundation of his candidacy on undoing Little Bush's warmongering ways, and now we're diving deeper into Afghanistan... And he pledged to close Guantanamo, but results on that one are hard to come by... He railed against immunity for phone companies who played along with dubious wiretapping practices, then changed his mind on that one... He touted the stimulus bill as a buffer against 9 percent unemployment, and here we stand today at 9.7 and rising... He promised his administration would be a model of openness, but last week the White House fought a request to release a list of visitors related to health care reform... It's not pretty.
On the other hand, as I wrote in my last post, his ambitious plans could save America as we know it. That's worth something. OK, I feel better.
Not to be a statistical stickler, but Google hits don't support either backlash or support unless you can plot them by date and eliminate duplicates and and and more stuff that's so convoluted and exhausting I can't even bring myself to think of it.
ReplyDeleteI think regardless of what you hoped for (or feared from) Obama from election through the first [some arbitrary number] days of his administration, the reality is that hope and good intentions don't magically fix real problems. That's liable to be more of a downer realization for Obama supporters than doubters (who have grown accustomed to being down already) and I imagine it's an especially hard hit when the guy was elected largely, if not entirely, on his potential.
I hope that he turns out to be what his supporters hoped for or, if not, that the fallout isn't horrific. Whether I wanted him or not, he's my president now and this is my country and I want him to succeed (and fail) in ways that will benefit the country. Here's hoping.