On February 27 of this year I wrote an email to the President, one of dozens I’ve sent him since he took office. A few of them have been supportive and congratulatory, but most have been critical, often harshly, of his policy positions and politics.
By and large I have preferred to address my criticisms and feelings to him directly instead of engaging in public pie fights or trying to persuade others to my point of view. I don’t enjoy pie fights, and I haven’t wanted others to share my point of view, since I am not an optimistic man but a compassionate one, and I didn’t want my contagion to spread.
On June 13 I received an email from Mary J. Brooke in the White House Office of Records Management. She informed me that the President appreciated my email of February 27 and that he had handwritten a response. She asked how I would like to receive it (the handwritten original, of course!) and included an attachment of the scanned response. I was surprised. I don’t think I ever believed he would actually read an email that I sent, since he doubtless receives thousands if not millions a day.
But he did, and here is what he wrote back:
I read your letter, and regret your disappointment. Perhaps from your vantage point it looks like I’ve betrayed working people. From my vantage point, we’ve rescued the country from a Great Depression, saved the auto industry, passed health care reform, strengthened financial oversight, ended the war in Iraq, ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, reversed eight years of anti-labor and anti-environmental regulation, expanded student aid to millions of young people, made the largest investment in clean energy in our history, and started enforcing our civil rights laws again. And this all in the face of an intransigent opposition.
Have we gotten everything we want? No. But that’s not how a democracy works. So rather than give up hope, I’d suggest you stay involved and keep working with like minded folks to bring about a fairer, more prosperous America.
What the hell had I written? This:
I continue to be dismayed and depressed by your unflinching fealty to the plutocrats on Wall Street and for the way your policies affirm right-wing narratives. I can't tell you how much of a disappointment you've been. Are you better than McCain would have been? Sure. But that's a pretty low bar.
Hope is dead for me. I no longer look for my life or the lives of other working Americans to improve, nor for you to take to heart the disappointment of your erstwhile supporters. You are enabling the renewed ascent of the right with your "bipartisan" shtick, your apparently sincerely held neoliberal economics, and your stable of Wall Street boys, savvy businessmen all, to be sure. The latest manifestation is your plan for the housing finance system. Hooray for Wall Street, right? The market is awesome, right? Although it doesn't look like that to us out here. We actually expected to see some of those bastards who wrecked the world economy in jail by now, not pulling down record bonuses. But what do we know? Well, we know that, Democrat or Republican, the rich get richer and the workers get screwed. That's the reality that we know.
It's not surprising that you can't be bothered to give more than limp-wristed support to the workers protesting a right-wing power grab in Wisconsin. I didn't really expect anything more.
Having read his response I can’t say that on re-reading my email I was proud of what I had written, particularly the wounded, peevish tone. I honestly expressed my response to the arc of his Presidency, to then developing events in Wisconsin, and to how low I was and am over my own slide to the brink of destitution, where I teeter today. But I felt small, and I regretted that nowhere in the one thing he’ll probably ever read from me did any respect for him or any appreciation I have for the difficulties and limitations of his job come through. It wasn’t that I disowned what I had written him (I don't) or that I had stumbled on some new well-spring of hope (I haven't), so much as that I felt embarrassed by how personal my email was. But then maybe that’s why it got shunted from staff to the President himself. I don’t know.
In the end, though, what I can’t argue with is his conclusion: “stay involved and keep working with like minded folks to bring about a fairer, more prosperous America.” That's hard to do when one feels hopeless, but in a democracy there really isn’t any other way.
12:04 PM PT: First time on the rec list. Thanks, everybody.
12:19 PM PT: For those who asked, here is a link to two Photobucket images of the front and back of the President's note: http://s271.photobucket.com/...