Dear President Obama:
Being called a retard by Rahm Emanuel was bad enough; the insults from Robert Gibbs today have the making of a final straw as far as I am concerned. I hope you will let him know that I would be ecstatic with President Kucinich, and that I am not alone with this opinion.
As much as I like you, President Obama, in the personal sense, and respect your intelligence, I did not jump on your campaign for those reasons. I did so because you spoke as though you were jumping on the campaign that many of us had been waging for eight years already. See, this "take back our country" phrase does not belong to the tea party. Many of us lived that after someone stole the White House in 2000 - because it was appropriate then. The fact that people who supported that stolen election, and the next one in 2004, are using the phrase now, when it is totally inappropriate and I’m not hearing anyone in your administration call them on this unethical, dishonest, Turdblossom-generated practice is as disappointing as being called a retard and told I should be drug tested
I understand how you are frustrated by not being recognized for all you have accomplished but ask you to abide yet another parental analogy. I promise, my frustration is as great as yours, and I think I can help you understand this.
When my daughter washed the dishes the first time and left globs of food stuck to the plates, I praised her for washing the dishes without mentioning the problem. As she filled the sink for her second night on the job, I reminded her to look over each dish to make sure it was clean before putting it on the rack to drain. After three months of dishwashing, I didn’t think it benefited either of us for me to praise her when she failed to complete the job of cleaning the dishes. Sure, I could have put them away and called the job done, but I was going to have to deal with her shortcomings every time I pulled a dish from the cabinet.
I appreciate that you keep filling the sink, President Obama but I don’t see the point in praising you for doing half of the job. Early on, I gave you credit for being naïve. You told me you are not naïve (I’m not sure I ever really believed you were, it just seemed better than anything else) and asked me to trust you. I did. I trusted that you knew something (actually, a lot of things) that I didn’t, and that your plan included showing the obstructionists how much they were hurting themselves and the citizens of this country by watering-down the bills that should have been.
But, before you proved a thing about the first watered down bill or had them begging you to go back and include what should have been there, you gave them the upper hand in the next item on your agenda. And the next . . . and so it has been.
The Presidency belongs to the people, not to your administration. You know there is no way the Republicans (including the half of them who claim to be Independents) will ever be pleased with anything you do. I know that you know that. See, I do not think you are a retard or need to be drug tested – I give you credit for knowing what any intelligent, sane, sober, honest person knows. You know, without doubt, that there is nothing you can do to please the people who want to see you fail. Those people want to take back the country that you won legitimately and give it to the people who stole it and will lie, steal, cheat, shoot-their-way-in with Annie Oakley and KKK candidates, and do anything possible to take it back.
You also know you are losing your base, even those of us who spent the last ten years campaigning for your presidency. Maybe you don’t care but I do. I know you cannot do what needs to be done without that base. That leaves you with – not much.
Please, deliver what you have asked of us; roll up your sleeves and work with us. You can’t do it without us, and we can’t do it without you. And we don’t have any more time to waste.