January 20, 2009. Inauguration Day. I recall anticipating the swearing in of Barack Obama like nothing I’d looked forward to for some time. Things were going to be different. Government was going to finally work for the People. Washington was finally going to change.
Yeah, right; so how’s all that “hopey, changey stuff workin’ out for ya??” So…what happened? What went wrong? Were we all so naive that we thought Barack Obama would actually walk the talk?
Remember the sense of excitement and anticipation that so many Americans felt on Inauguration Day? Remember how so many American jammed Washington, DC, on that frigid January day to witness history? Remember how we felt that things were FINALLY going to change, and that Washington was FINALLY going to be run as if the American Sheeple actually mattered? Remember the promises made and the promise we reveled in?
I remember looking forward to Inauguration Day like nothing I’d looked forward to for a long time. Almost two years later, and I find myself wondering what happened. Why did a President who came into office buoyed by so much hope go so horribly wrong? When did compromise and capitulation becoming the new hope and change? When (and how) did a man who inspired millions with his rhetoric, his passion, and his ideas become so terrified of Republicans and thoroughly incapable of following through on that inspiration?
Over the past few months, but particularly over the past few weeks, I’ve witnessed President Obama and Congressional Democrats turn their majority in Congress into a functional minority. Whether through a lack of passion, commitment, or cojones, Democrats have displayed a stunning spinelessness and a cowardly inability to stand up and fight that’s truly epic and even more disturbing.
If Republicans can still rule Washington with a minority in Congress, then what hope do the American Sheeple have, especially considering what Democrats have failed to accomplish with their minority?
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t necessarily mind compromise, which, to make certain that we’re all on the same page, is defined as follows:
Compromise represents, per the late Tip O’Neill, politics as the art of the possible. It’s about coming to a meeting of the minds in order to achieve the greatest possible good for the greatest number. Politics (and Washington) being what it is, this is often pie-in-the-sky optimism, but compromise is not by definition a bad thing. What is a bad thing is when compromise is mistaken for (and conflated with) capitulation:
If President Obama and Congressional Democrats have proven anything, it’s that they’re constitutionally incapable of standing up and fighting for their principles. This is why they’re going to end up trading a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for a one-year extension of unemployment benefits. Why are they doing this…besides the obvious cowardice and lack of a moral center? Because they’re afraid of their own shadow? Because they’re afraid of making Republicans angry? Or is it simply that they’ve forgotten why they ran for office in the first place? Have they forgotten who it is that sent them to Washington in the first place?
Welcome to the new oligarchy…and Democrats, among them the President, are willingly rolling over for the minority party. Get used to being held hostage by our new corporate overlords. The sad thing is that it shouldn’t have been this way.
WE DESERVE BETTER.
