while we are trying to fight the battles.
They've succeeded in even making liberals distrust government. That's all they care about, killing off the idea that government can work.
So, while the president, a constitutional scholar, who actually believes in coequal branches of government is trying to restore the office he occupies back into it's true role. His "base" (although I would dispute that progressives where the only part of his base)wants him to dictate.
"Be more like Bush," I've heard and read. Really? try to usurp congresses authority because we believe in his goals? I don't have health care, never have, but I'd rather lose this battle, then win by selling out our constitutional form of democracy.
The president even gets attacked for not having a single plan and allowing the committees to do their job. Why are we against congress actually working for the people, as it was intended to do?
5 plans? oh the horror of it... yes 5 plans, because that's how you write a bill. The president has already moved a public option through the 4 committees that have passed their bills in his 7th month in office, while staving off a great depression, and for the first time ever assuming the presidency from the other party in a time of war.
That's how bills are made, the committees pass their bills, then merge them in the the house and senate respectively. They take votes and then merge the senate and house bills in conference. They vote again and the president signs the bill making it law. Why are we attacking the president for believing in this process? In believing that government can and will work for the people?
Hell, the guy didn't even get a break between the 2 years of campaigning and the inauguaration, cause Bush had taken off long before that, so it fell to him to hold the free world together during the transition. Remember that press conference where he made the Nancy Reagan joke? It was reported that he hadn't slept for 72 hours before that press conference. He's been working hard and making government work for the people since he was elected.
And yet, he is called a sellout, coward, wuss. That's by his "base".
His foes? They want him dead. They call him a socialist, communist, muslim-terrorist, baby-murdering nazi. The new Hitler.
He's been putting his life on the line since that day he announced in 2006. Even Teddy who wanted him to run was hesitant, because he knew, he more than any knew the hate that would come.
His family must be scared to death every time he is in public. People who truly hate him bring guns to his events, yet he keeps going out there and pushes for health care at town halls.
And we call him a sellout, a coward, a wuss. We call him weak and wallow in our worry.
I've never written a diary before, but I felt compelled to. I watched Teddy's final goodbye over the last 15 months. The goodbye he orchestrated for us, up to the last single detail.
I heard Teddy tell us to two things.
The first being that health care is his life's cause. It echoed throughout the last days. In his children and grandchildren, his friends and religious figures. Teddy kept telling us that health care was what mattered to him most. His last words that he wanted us to hear where in that letter he sent to the pope.
But that isn't why i wrote my first diary. It's the second thing I heard Teddy tell us.
He told us to follow Barack Obama. He urged Barack to run, he endorsed him when it mattered. He campaigned across America for him, singing in English and Spanish with people all over the country who loved him. Teddy braved kidney stones and cancer to make it to the convention to pass the torch to the one person in half a century he felt worthy of it. He suffered seizures at the inauguration to bear witness to what he helped achieve.
Teddy had Barack eulogize him, not because he was his oldest friend, but because he believed in him and wanted us to know that. And even in Teddy's last words through that letter to the pope, he vouched for Barack. he wanted us to know that.
The letter began, "Most Holy Father I asked President Obama to personally hand deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Roman Catholic faith is to me, and I am so deeply grateful to him."
I trusted Teddy, and Teddy I heard you loud and clear.
I believe that government can work for the people, I'm not ready to give up.