The President of the United States. Hopefully until 2017.
As I write this, I am seated on my favorite couch. Immediately above me on this couch are two large memorabilia frames. Within each frame are various front pages of newspapers and magazines, bumper stickers and buttons, from a certain day in November 2008. By the end of the previous day, well over 130 million citizens of this country had cast a ballot in an election that the entire nation knew was historic. And when those votes were counted, a significant majority of them had been cast for someone who embodied a feeling that from the ashes of corruption, greed and a tattered economy would rise a fresh start and a new approach embodied by an elected leader who was the first of his kind: a president who broke the stranglehold of the traditionally privileged and represented the ultimate manifestation of the American dream.
It's no secret that for many, the policies borne on the wings of the change they hoped for have not yet come to pass. There have been successes, to be sure, but what many view as failures have been hard to swallow not just owing to a failure to implement a desired progressive policy such as a public option or stronger regulations on Wall Street or polluters. Rather, the failures are perceived as that much greater because of the singular opportunity that the 111th Congress provided.
Readers of Naomi Klein's seminal book The Shock Doctrine understand that right-wing economic policies have a sordid history of not being implemented democratically; rather, the free-market supremacism of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek could only be implemented when a people had been so severely traumatized by economic collapse or social upheaval that the tenets of disaster capitalism could be imposed and Keynesian interventions eliminated without fear of an angry populace. And as the cases of Chile, Argentina, Indonesia and so many others demonstrate, oftentimes the destabilization of a left-wing government was intentionally orchestrated by the economic aristocracy precisely to achieve the installation of an oppressive "Chicago School" economic regime.
The economic collapse of 2008 and the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010 provided what should have been singular opportunities for the implementation of progressive change. A combination of righteous indignation at the masters of the economic universe and the dirty-energy industry, combined with a Congress that saw Democratic majorities whose strength is not likely to be repeated for many years, should have provided the perfect opportunity for fundamental changes to our long-term national strategies regarding economic balance and energy production. Instead, we have a Treasury Department still replete with Wall Street executives and a White House that continues to talk about the myth of clean coal and cannot even take the symbolic step of putting a solar panel on the roof. For a movement progressive, these wasted opportunities are deeply frustrating at a visceral level, especially since the Republican rebound of 2010 essentially ended any hope of substantial progressive change that cannot be accomplished through an executive order.
I am disappointed. But despite this and other negatives I could tally—counterbalanced, certainly, by a litany of positive accomplishments—I still support President Obama, and not just because the possibility of President Bachmann or another second-rate Republican contender will scare me into action. Not because of the milquetoast defense that the alternative is so much worse. But because I truly believe in the best intentions of Barack Obama.
President Obama's rhetoric on the campaign trail always struck notes of harmony, of reconciliation, and of unity. Obama has always wanted to the the president of the entire country, including everyone and excluding no one—a perfect embodiment of the diversity of color, experience and backgrounds that as a whole constitute the greatness that is America. On the evening of the New Hampshire primary, he gave a speech whose end has been etched into our memories as what is arguably the most iconic political video of all time. He said:
And so tomorrow, as we take the campaign South and West; as we learn that the struggles of the textile workers in Spartanburg are not so different than the plight of the dishwasher in Las Vegas; that the hopes of the little girl who goes to a crumbling school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of the boy who learns on the streets of L.A.; we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea – Yes. We. Can.
So he believed, and still does, in my opinion. He must have hope that all the elements of the country that elected him will end up putting their selfish interests aside for the good of the country. Despite everything, he seems to be a firm believer in the right intentions of his political adversaries, and seeks to build a compromise, a consensus, that incorporates everyone's best ideas about how to move this country forward. That, combined with a natural willingness not to cross certain boundaries in consideration of a re-election bid, have contributed to an approach that is more deliberate, cautious, magnanimous, and centrist than what the progressive movement would like to see—especially since such a significant portion of the voters that did not elect him have been rather explicit about the lack of desire for consensus on anything.
And that is perhaps the most important point. I believe, perhaps naively, that in a second term, Obama will realize that his greatest dream of ending the vicious political divide in this country is unachievable. I also believe that in a second term, Obama will no longer have the consideration of what may or may not hinder a re-election bid. And I believe that Obama will want to leave a lasting legacy of fundamental change that will necessarily not include any participation from the Republican Party. And that can only make things get better from here.