Will The New President Cut My Lawn??

While the next years will be a time of sweeping social change unseen in our nation, pinning those hopes on Obama's scrawny shoulders seems misguided. He is a politician, lawyer, and populist, but not a savior.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

...or shovel my walk, or find me a job, or raise my children, or make me wealthy?

Time is here! In a handful of days the Bushes will mercifully vanish and a new hope will inherit the crisis that is the United States. We have elected a man who, while light on so-called traditional experience, represents how America's best days are still to come.

We want to believe the romantic notion; and before we take to the street for random acts of hope, we should remember how Obama got elected. He ran a uniformly deft campaign that never veered off message. He never promised us a cure for all America's ills. He sold us a tempered version of "hope" and a return to our Constitutional roots. (See ya, Guantanamo!)

Last winter, hope hype took on a life of its own. The fiercely-disciplined campaign didn't paint Obama as the second coming or a Bobby Kennedy Reincarnate -- well, not overtly -- but they didn't exactly stop it from happening. We became addicted to hope.

2009-01-16-kennedyobama1.jpg
All over the City of New York, there were and still are posters of Obama with Dr. King; Obama with President Lincoln; Obama with a Kennedy. While parallels between the meteoric rise of Obama and those figures are somewhat striking, it isn't fair for even the most devoted supporters to expect the President-Elect to achieve what those men achieved.

Those expectations are simply too high for an army of nice-looking, transformative, post partisan figures to handle. Because I love Obama as much as, or more than, the next guy, I beseech us all to HOPE that President O keeps it real.

Inauguration Day at noon will be a wonderful moment in history but it isn't going to make the polar ice caps spontaneously refreeze or end the Middle East conflict or (heavy sigh) get my stimulus check into my mailbox any sooner.

While the next four/eight years may/will be a time of sweeping social change and prosperity unseen in our nation, pinning those slim hopes on Obama's scrawny shoulders seems misguided. Obama is a politician, a lawyer, and a populist, but not savior.

The lesson in Obama's America is a witnessing a return to personal accountability. The President is responsible for making sure the system isn't broken, so we have a fair shot. Every one of us.

Beyond that, it takes more than hope on your part, America.

It takes reality.

Read more musings in my fabulous book 2011: Trendspotting and at Laermer.com

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot