I donated to the Obama presidential campaign in December 2007. I share this not as a badge of honor, but as a way of illustrating that my support for his candidacy and his presidency is relatively deep-seated. I'd never given money to a politician before, for Taosakes. I'd always been a big fan of campaign finance reform and the prospect of publicly funded races at any level of politics.
(That stance made me a fan of John McCain, by the way, in the early part of this decade. The pre-Sarah Palin version of McCain, I like quite a bit. That's a guy who bucked the system on issues dear to his heart. He teamed up with a liberal Democrat to combat the corruptive influence of big donors; he embraced the fight against climate change despite the anti-scientific wing of his party. But I digress.)
So I sent off some of my semi-hard-earned dough to a heavy underdog in the race for the Democratic nomination. I re-donated several times in small increments throughout 2008. $25 or $30 at a time. I'm not wealthy. Just hopeful.
And my guy won. Twice. He cleaned clocks belonging to Clinton and that McCain fellow, who I think would have won every other general election since Reagan. Obama won blood-red states like Indiana. He took North Carolina. And Florida. And Virginia. He threatened in Georgia, Missouri and Montana. It was a good year to be a inexperienced biracial candidate with the middle name "Hussein" -- which still blows my mind -- and a big fat "D" next to your name on the ballot. (Let's get real. A gay atheist might have won the presidency last year with all the sh*t Bush handed down to McCain.)
Well, after the election, then came the small matter of governing. Hey Barack, welcome to the Oval Office, how about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression? And how about a bank failure each day for a year? And crashing housing markets? And a stock market plunge? And bankruptcy for GM and Chrysler? Did we mention spiraling health care costs?
What I'm trying to say here, as I finally, at last, none too soon, reach the actual point of this post, is that BHO has the opportunity to be the greatest president in the history of the United States.
Sure, you can call that an easy statement. Every president has that opportunity. Even Little Bush. Imagine a 9/11 followed by a surgical strike on Al Qaeda leaders, the capture of Bin Laden, and all the fortune spent on two ill-conceived wars instead funneled to preserving Social Security benefits, establishing a fair health care system (even from a conservative vantage point) and continuing the balanced budget reached by Clinton and the GOP Congress of the nineties. Imagine no waterboarding memos, no dismantling of the Justice Department, no bungled response to Katrina. Remove that myriad of catastrophic errors -- and others -- and we'd be looking for a way to rescind the two-term limit we impose on presidents. (Also, the Democratic Party might have ceased to exist, so there's that to consider.)
I believe Obama will make some egregious mistakes. He's not actually ever been president before just this January, so some on-the-job learning is inevitable, and some of his ideas will probably crash and burn, maybe even after they're enacted into law.
But the man could leave office with the following accomplishments.
1) An overhaul of the health care system that empowers the little guys, like the needy families and the small businesses. And saves us trillions of dollars really quickly.
2) A revamping of our energy policy that places new emphasis on energy independence, nuclear power, renewable sources and greens our economy and our world while reducing our dependence on foreign oil, which threatens our national security. And saves us trillions of dollars in the long run, not nearly as quickly.
3) A replenishment of the prestige of America on the world scene. This is an important thing; even when overstated, it remains underrated. And saves millions of lives.
4) The establishment of a formula that preserves most Social Security benefits through the end of the century. And saves millions of heartaches.
5) Finding an acceptable conclusion to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush got a clue regarding Iraq just in time, now Obama has to stay the course there; his job is much more challenging in Afghanistan. I'll add, predictably, that victory or something close to it in both places would save millions of lives and some insane amount of euros /yuan.
And he could muck it all up on a grand scale. The recovery could take years to arrive, health care reform could turn into a colossal waste of money, our troops could continue to die in Afghanistan for decades because of a poor decision he makes. Out-of-control budget deficits could cripple us and cause long-term economic crisis or the elimination of the dollar or a serious setback in our living standards. All that is possible.
Or he could be. The. Greatest. President. Ever.
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