Invictus
Obama Year Five
Discovering Our Inner Lyndon Johnson
It is, for me, the height of irony that Hillary Clinton’s 2008
presidential coronation was ganked by Barack Obama’s insurgency.
Hillary Clinton made Barack Obama possible in the sense that,
once the nation accepted the idea of a woman as a viable
presidential candidate, the door flew off its hinges, meaning a
black or Latino candidate would also be taken more seriously
than at any other point in history. However, Barack Obama’s
presidency has in turn been ganked by the Duck Dynasty Congress,
a Congress that would have despised Clinton equally, but would
have lacked the irrational imperative of the racial component
and would have feared playing the sexism card in ways they do
not fear playing the race card: we’re staying home in 2014 and
they know it. They’ve redistricted the hell out of the
Congressional map; the old boat anchor reactionaries are secure
in their jobs (which is all they demonstrably care about), do
not fear this president, and don’t seem to mind being labeled a
bigot.
Barack Obama, meanwhile, lacks either the skill or the will to
find his inner Lyndon Johnson. The birth certificate nonsense
dragged on and on not because of Donald Trump or the Tea Party
but because the president refused to just stand up and call them
all out on it. His mother was a U.S. citizen. Barack Obama could
have been born on the moon, he'd still be a U.S. citizen.
It was a non-story. There were matters of desperately vital
importance which were not being written about because ignorant,
Stupid People refused to let the story die. I shudder to imagine
the tantrum Lyndon Johnson would have thrown in the press room,
likely threatening to revoke the credentials of the next nitwit
who wrote about that idiotic story. There's important work to
do. I understand Obama's reluctance to ever complain about the
racism routinely hurled at him, but only the president can sound
like the president, and this whole birther thing is a prime
example of how Obama's mannered "no drama" disposition harms his
presidency.
The little movement the president had gotten out of
these people in the past couple of months has been due, in large
measure, to his willingness to play hardball. Every time this
president shows even a little gumption, his numbers go up and
these morons in Congress get a black eye. He seems to be slowly,
far too slowly, learning this. Obama is not chummy. Johnson had
Congressional leaders over all the time, friends and foes alike.
Jeff Bridges showed us how this is done in the excellent but
little-seen film The Contender, schmoozing with recalcitrant
Congressman Christian Slater over a shark sandwich. This is not
Obama, and this is why his agenda is in shambles.
Discovering Our Inner Lyndon Johnson
Presuming that somebody had the healthcare website well in hand was a
mistake of inestimable proportions, but not nearly as big as
what is a shockingly naive political mindset of this
Administration in presuming the website would be part of their
overall strategy, a spoke in the wheel rather than its hub.
Congressional Republicans have smartly and successfully
convinced the Stupid People in America that Healthcare.Gov is
Obamacare, that they are in fact one and the same, which is
ridiculous, but that’s the mindset of Stupid People. Young
people, most especially, tend to be Stupid People not because
they actually are stupid per se but because they are immature,
lacking reason and experience. Young People presume the Facebook
website is Facebook, missing the point Facebook is a $68
billion corporate monolith. Young People, most especially,
presume the web interface factually is Obamacare and therefore
a malfunctioning website undermines their confidence in the
entire program. Not that young people were planning to sign up
anyway: the fatal flaw in the Affordable Care Act is its
reliance upon the young, what are being called The Young
Invincibles, to sign up. Young people are focused almost
exclusively on self-gratification. They buy car insurance
because they can be arrested if discovered driving without it.
The penalties for not having health insurance are absurdly
ephemeral, and young peoples' financial priorities go something
like this: sex, dope, clothes, toys, munchies. Young people pay
rent only under protest. They will cry broke over the measly
$150 or whatever Obamacare will cost them, but look around
Friday and Saturday nights: they’ve got gas money, they’ve got
beer and pot money. This is their world, and only a real threat
(homelessness, or, more accurately, being forced to move back
with their parents, utilities disconnect, incarceration) will
convince them to spend their money on things that do not
immediately gratify themselves. The president sounds less than
confident and his eyes tend to wander a little whenever he makes
a case for the young to purchase health insurance, as if the
young can actually hear him over the music most of them are
blasting 24/7. I can’t depend on these people to walk my dog,
yet the president is betting the nation’s healthcare reform on
them.
The colossal failure of the healthcare rollout is all most
anyone will remember about the president’s first post-reelection
year, not the 4% GDP growth, 7% unemployment, or the president’s
amazing stare-down of the Nutty 112th Congress over Ted Cruz’s
ridiculous $20 billion government shutdown. In truth, 2013
marked the beginning of our finally reaping some dividends from
the president’s hard-won successes. This is the likely reason he
ran for reelection in the first place: anyone with half a brain
would know things were bound to improve sooner or later. Had the
president not run, we’d likely see the 4% anyway but Mitt Romney
would be taking a bow for it. If for no other reason, I’m sure
this president wanted to be sitting in the big chair when his
hard-fought battles began to, at long last, bear the nation
fruit.
He actually had a very good year, but it is remembered, at least
in the short term, as the worst of a presidency stuck in
gridlock. And, while it’s fun to blame the whack jobs in
Congress, all of us—including the president—share blame in the
government dysfunction. The president is a black man. Ray
Charles, even in his current state, could see the Ignorant
Racist Know-Nothing crowd coming. But it seemed to take this
president by surprise and he seems way too reluctant to do the
inelegant dirty work of the presidency, the
ends-justifying-the-means sausage making. That reluctance has
crippled his presidency more than anything these nut jobs have
done.
You and I (or people like us) caused this to happen. Supporting
Obama is, in itself, tribal. Many black Americans, myself
included, feel a visceral moral obligation to support this
president in ways we’d never support other presidents. From my
chair, the president gets an A+ for his amazing vision and
ambitious goals, but perhaps a B-minus for his actual
achievements if we’re grading on a curve. After the long winter
of the Bush Legacy, it is deliriously refreshing for the
nation to once again be led by someone who is aggressively if
not fanatically dedicated to bettering the lives of all
Americans. However, virtually everything he’s done has been
watered-down and compromised so much they became at best a
shadow of the potent change we all voted for. We organized and
worked hard and pressed our way in 2008 but were too stupid, yes
stupid, lazy and, I guess, dizzy from all the high-fiving over
Obama’s win to understand how essential 2010 was. This is why we
are suffering today. The 2010 crowd of naïve, inexperienced
wingnuts have unquestionably prolonged the recession, wrecked
the nation’s credit, initiated the sequester, ended extended
unemployment benefits, spent over two million dollars on
symbolic votes to repeal Obamacare and cost the nation $20
billion (that’s with a “B”) over the government shutdown—all of
this out of political interest. We’re furious at them, but it’s
really not them: they’re just doing what they do. It’s us. We
didn’t show up, Grampa And The Klan did, and these are the
morons those people picked out. Why any of this surprises us or
the president is beyond me. The nation’s wounds are almost
entirely self-inflicted. The world most certainly think us
idiots to invent problems that didn’t exist and to deliberately
sabotage our nation’s future out of tribal paranoia over the
color of the president’s skin.
My most optimistic sense of 2014 is that, being an election
year, things may likely get worse. Conservative Republicans want
to be able to run on a record of obstructing President Obama,
which plays the irrational hatred card of the disenfranchised
Stupid People who so viscerally and personally despise the
president. This hurts farmers. Cops. School teachers. Dog
walkers. Whites, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Evangelicals,
Atheists. Everybody. All in an effort to please the intransigent
racist minority in this country who would prefer nothing get
done in Washington at all then to support this president in any
way. Given this dreadful reality, the president has won some
amazing achievements, all of which surely vex both the rednecks
and the liberal elites who believe they are above racism. I
can't imagine why the president even ran for reelection and
openly wonder if that wasn't a selfish act, knowing the gridlock
will continue so long as he's in the White House. Given that the
president has not managed to effectively focus his own massive
electorate on mid-term elections, 2014 is poised to be yet
another electoral bloodletting for the president, the cement
hardening on Capitol Hill all the more.
Christopher J. Priest
29 December 2013
editor@praisenet.org
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