A lot of people here are really pissed with President Obama right now. I certainly sympathize. He's made a number of decisions as President that don't make sense to me, decisions that I wouldn't have expected him to make. And he's failed to do things that I thought he would, or in the way I thought he would. I'm upset about Guantanamo, about his choices for the Fed, about his failure to play hardball with the republicans.
But from my perspective, I still have full respect for President Obama. I honestly still love just writing that. I respect his intelligence and experience, his tactical awareness, his decision-making skills. I believe he's doing the best he can, that he's committed to so doing, and there's still no one I'd rather have for president. But this isn't a diary about praise, it's a dairy about perspective.
And the perspective that I remember best is on election night, sitting at a crowded bar, waiting for the Pennsylvania returns...
.... I knew that if PA went blue, we were in. And until it was definitely called, President John McCain was an operative reality, and one that honestly terrified me. There had been years previous when I would have happily chosen McCain over Bush, but after choosing Palin for VP, he went into a scary death-spiral of craziness and I was (and am) convinced that he was a lot more dangerous than W.
Obama winning Pennsylvania was a beautiful moment for me, and it still is. Maybe in an alternate universe, Hillary would be a better president, but I never saw a path for her through the primaries, and I don't feel that she had earned it. She's done well in her current role but hasn't exactly blazed a shining trail of glory. And in our universe, Obama won the primary. He defeated McCain. That was a hard-fought, close campaign, and he fought well. He won. I am enormously grateful for that.
Maybe I'm setting the bar low, but after 8 years of W, 4 more of crazy McCain would have broken me. I would have left (an option that is easily available to me). Obama's stood up and fought for things McCain would have squashed like bugs. We would probably now be dealing with the aftermath of an attack on Iran. Palin would be running rampant like the Whore of Babylon (no disrespect for whores, it's a biblical reference....).
At one point during the 2008 campaign, I was so outraged by McCain's misbehavior (probably endorsing Palin's "pallin' around with terrorists" smear) that I ended up pulling up a bunch of McCain campaign signs. I got spat on and threatened, and in hindsight it was not a correct action (I had decided that I was expressing my freedom of speech). I was fine with that - it felt good to have some blood in the game.
I remember Inauguration Day and will always be proud and grateful that I could be there. I remember the protests in DC I've gone to since as lacking the menacing police presence and general threat that every protest I went to during the W years had, including the ones where I watched protesters attacked and beaten by the police.
In my work with environmental non-profits, I'm seeing significant relationships developing with federal agencies, spurred by President Obama's initiatives. This is a remarkable and positive step forward. I'm seeing the US return to a position of trust and respect in the world (and yes, even with Wikileaks in play). I'm seeing people complaining about suboptimal outcomes that would have been completely impossible under W or McCain. I'm seeing right-wing memes rippling through DK in ways that make no sense to me. And for all the people that say that Obama's lost their vote, I've still not seen anyone suggest a viable alternative candidate for 2012.
Yes, progressives worked hard to elect Obama, and their votes were important. But so were the votes of all those who didn't vote in 2010. From my perspective, we can chose to join them, or we can work to re-engage them. I've said this here before, but Obama campaigned on "Be the change you want to see", not "I will be the change you want to see". The W years taught me that, however upset I might get about what the White House and Congress was doing, my time and energy was more productively spent on local issues, working with people and communities. That's where my focus is now. That's where I see results, and a place for meaningful action.
So that's my perspective.