Blaming is a national, international and interpersonal sport, as well as the ultimate way to score political points outside of promises, platitudes and harnessing of the passion of hope. Funny how all of these meet in disharmony on the one year anniversary of Barack Obama's election to the Presidency of the United States.
The Republicans are in full gear with their own campaign that insists that any of his health care initiatives would bleed our citizens as part of their strategy to defeat him at every turn. Even the Progressives blast him for disappointed promises, while business people decry the very same interventions that saved them from doom.
While some people shamelessly delight in blame--a substitution for civility and information--there are significant reasons for many of us to feel disappointed. Candidate Obama fed into our codependent-like hunger for a leader who would be everything in a country where nobody gets to be President without shady deals in hallways by menacing power brokers most of us don't know, where embedded prejudices remain and where the same dealers pounce to defeat a person and a policy from the moment (and before) he enters office.
We, the People are also perpetuating the tendency to blame one human being in what seems like the wish for a strong monarch rather than a democratically elected President. Aside from the slipperiness of advertising and the misleading nature of most campaign promises, democracy implicitly insists that we come out of our closets of self-righteousness and get real.
Yes, Obama should live up to his vows and his capacities to recruit the best counsel and guidance from the most astute consultants. In his becoming more real as well, he might evaluate more deeply the poor quality of an education system that sacrifices inspiration for high test scores as well as its impact on children and families rather than merely telling kids to do their homework. And sure, he should have been more aggressive in closing prisons where people are being tortured in ways we thought only the Nazis used. These are only two examples of policies that require more sensitive action on the government's part.
Yet, the President is only one person who might be confronted by mandates from those who would take away his chances to lead at all.
Perhaps we owe it to ourselves to be asking why are the above actions being avoided, negated or put off? What is really going in between the lines of the deals that are surely in progress and that seem to be intimidating the President against acting in arenas too sensitive, let's say, for our military? What pressures is he under, in other words? We need to know, to be told, to demand to be informed even if the facts uncovered disturb our loyalty, oaths and allegiances.
To stay in the mode of blame is an indulgence that can feel invigorating for moments at a time but in general is depleting for individuals and for relationships of any kind and at any level.
Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize which, for many, seemed premature and perhaps even ludicrous. But many in our larger world have perceived in him the true abilities to articulate (not a sin, by the way) and negotiate with any and every side of a conflict. His potential was being heralded, seconded, and called upon to deliver.
There is no good reason for us as a nation -- no matter what camp -- to scapegoat a President who shows promise to use his gifts to be a true leader. However, as long as we hire or lure thugs into town hall meetings and merely fling our complaints at him, we lend only a destructive force. In a democracy, allegedly, the people inform the President just as he informs us.
We can only constructively inform if we value the ongoing possibilities of a democratic country in more than name only. Even then we can share actual information that might enlighten, and enhance the programs being planned and those in progress only if we lay down our arms of scorn and come together in sharing the complexity of truth regarding our country and the globe as it is.
We have relied on pledges of perfect presidencies, knowing all the while that there is no such thing. It might help if we show some respect for the pressures Obama is up against. For my part, I would like to see President Obama come down from the pedestal we all agreed to place him on, come down from the "Yes we can" to the "This is what we need to face, together."
So, one year after the election, what do you think Candidate Obama would think of President Obama? Tweet your response (our Twitter hashtag is #OneYearLater), or post it in the comments section.
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