Flipping through the channels last night it was a shock to hear Richard Wolffe respond to Charlie Rose acknowledging that President Barack Obama doesn't instill fear.
Wolffe was correct, but the shocking part to me was why would they think instilling fear is an asset for a president.
The George W Bush/Darth Vader presidency was, in essence, fear mongering to get their way. Only Russ Feingold in the Senate wasn't stampeded into voting for the Patriot Act.
Wow!!! Only one man in the Senate with the courage to say no to the corporate stooges who ran a catastrophic presidency from January 2001 to January 2009.
Ok, George and Laura Bush allowed the grandson of Jaques Cousteau to talk them into saving the fragile ecosystem off the remote archipelago running northwest (I think) off the Hawaiian Islands. Good for them I appreciated it. But most of the rest wasn't too good and it started and ended with fear mongering.
Our President, Barack Obama, may have, certainly did, cooperate with the vestigial remnants of the violent Bush/Darth Vader/Dr Strangelove presidency - the dark side of the War on the Use of Terror, but Barack refused to operate a War Using Terror on his own people or on the constitutionally separate members of Congress. (Although, he's not perfect - there was the drone thing - some terrible things happened.)
No, President Obama doesn't use threats of mushroom clouds. He has refused to use that tool, the powerful tool of fear to stampede the weaker among us into supporting unsustainable policy.
I'm disappointed in Richard Wolffe if I understand correctly that he thinks presidential leadership is all about fomenting fear to get stuff done. We've all witnessed the end game of fear and it's disastrous and not sustainable. I'm never surprised by what Charlie Rose thinks - he seems to come from a different planet - the planet of confusion.
We obviously have not yet achieved full democracy. We have not, as Barack reminds us frequently achieved a perfect union. But I believe that we can only achieve a "more perfect union" if we free ourselves from the use of manipulation through fear.
So, if President Obama can allow himself to be pushed into rejecting Larry Summers; if he can be pushed into negotiating with Russia and Iran and even China on Syria to get control of and dispose of their CWs then maybe, at last, we have a chance to - as Barack himself has said many times - establish a "more perfect union".
Who knows what goes on behind the scenes. I'd like to think that, all along, President Obama was hoping we would push him to reject Larry Summers. He faces the overwhelming power of the corporate agenda that throws tons of bucks at anyting they want from government. But, as long as it played out, somehow, to avoid another round of Larry Summers f.....g us over.
So however, it was accomplished, in the end you let us push you to do what we all knew was best.
Go President Obama - we don't want fear mongering from you. A big reason I have hope for our country right now is that you have chosen not to use fear a la Bush/Darth Vader/Dr. Strangelove, to accomplish your goals, You have chosen instead to try to use your presidency to achieve not your goals but our goals - goals that the fear mongers have ignored in the past that just maybe will help us avoid Robert Frost's dire endings of "Fire and Ice", at least maybe for a little while in the cosmic scheme.