Where I'll Be In October 2012

I've always paid attention to the news.  It's a habit I learned from my father, whose interest in current events in 1939 helped save his life.  He read the news in the US for much the same reason that he read it in Poland.  It was his view that your standing in the world could change in a heartbeat.  You had to be informed and ready to move fast.  It's why he insisted on all of us having current passports.  It's why he had gold coins stashed away.  Unlike my father, I don't consider my place in the US to be tenuous, but I still read the news every day.

Stability is something I expect from the US.  In fact, I never really cared that much who was president.  It seemed like a figurehead position mostly.  There are so many checks in the US system that a president's power is limited.  Even someone completely incompetent can't really screw up the country too badly or so I thought.  Then W. came along.  I had to rethink my position on the importance of the presidency.

Bush made me realize that a president can truly create chaos in every way imaginable.  I'd never seen such a thing.  The presidency was a critical position after all.  I decided to get proactive in 2004.  I'd had enough of massive deficits created by irresponsible tax breaks and two wars, destruction of basic things that government is designed to do like emergency disaster services (this problem would come to the fore in Bush's second term), and faith-based baloney.  I didn't like Kerry much, but anything was better than the incompetence of Bush.  I donated money to Kerry.  I made phone calls.

By 2008, Bush had created even more disasters.  I quickly signed up to work on Clinton's campaign.  The staff consisted of me and thousands of women of a certain age.  The campaign had no energy and joy.  It was dominated by grimness and determination, but it was competent and well funded.  In the end, misogyny - the language used by the pundits and the press to describe Clinton was consistently laced with nastiness - triumphed over racism and Obama won the nomination.  I didn't skip a beat and signed on to Obama's campaign for the final election.

There was joy in Obama's troupe.  There was beaucoup enthusiasm.  But there was also a ridiculous level of naivete.  The people on that campaign were convinced that Obama was a liberal who would bring back the 1960s emphasis on social services, get us out of both of our wars, and make miracles.  I didn't understand where this sentiment came from.  Pundits went gaga over Obama as well and threw around the word "transformative".  I'd look at the man and his policy statements - he wanted 27,000 more people in our military forces and wanted to double down on Afghanistan; his golfing buddy was a bigwig on Wall Street - and I thought this guy with his middle of the road values and his emphasis on being a good dad was a modern (and richer) version of Ward Cleever.

There would be no transformation with Obama.  We'd stay a center-right nation.  If we were lucky, he'd be a quick learner - the man had no real administrative experience and didn't seem to have any real back room political ability - and prove himself to be as competent as Clinton.  If we were unlucky, he'd fumble along.

It's now 2011.  How has Obama done?  He certainly hasn't been transformative.  I didn't expect or want a new wave of liberalism so I'm not disappointed.  Overall, I'd give Obama a C+ (and that's including grade inflation).  On the minus side, it's clear that Obama doesn't have Bill Clinton's competence and ability to work with others.  Obama has shown no leadership in getting Congress to move.  He's shown no negotiating prowess.  He's wasted time on a quixotic quest to achieve peace in the Middle East and has shown much naivete in the process.  He doubled down on Afghanistan, wasting money and losing lives.

Obama is a middle-of-the-roader who is fabulous at giving speeches in an arena and uninspiring one on one.  He is conflict averse and not at all creative.  He really is a modern day Ward Cleever, kind of boring and sincere (with the big exception that he really is a wonderful orator).

Still, Obama has done some things reasonably well.  The health care law is messy and flawed, but necessary (even if it took too long to pass).  He is slowly but surely getting us out of Iraq.  Obama has brought back competence to basic necessary functions like emergency disaster services.  The EPA is no longer being dismantled.  We have a sort of sane energy policy that places some value in energy conservation.  I'm getting a little less competence with Obama than I hoped for, but I'm getting about what I expected policy-wise.

The one thing that I didn't expect was that the Republican Party would be taken over by lilly-white,  right-wing extremists while Obama was in office.   I thought that the Republicans would actually move a bit more to the center in anticipation of 2012.  They needed another five or ten percent of the vote to win and I guessed that they would spend their time trying to go after a portion of the Hispanic vote.  It would have been a good play for 2012 and for the future.

Boy was I wrong.  Instead of leaning toward the center and trying to appeal to America's broadening multi-cultural base, they decided to double down on whiteness and attract the kookie Ruby Ridge fringe.  It was a crazy strategy.  It worked in 2010, but I can't imagine it will have any positive impact in 2012.  It's going to take the Republicans a good half-dozen years to recover from this misstep.

Presidential elections are truly important.  It took me decades to figure that out.  Call me a slow learner.  Come 2012, the Republicans will have to nominate someone who appeals to its lunatic right wing fringe.  I don't know who it's going to be, but there doesn't look to be a whole lot of competence out there in the Republican field.  On the other hand, the Democrats will have the devil I know, Obama.  Actually, I wouldn't call Obama a devil.  He's a perfectly decent man with not very good political skills.

I'm sure liberals won't be on the phones and going door to door for Obama in 2012 in quite the same numbers as in 2008.  They had unrealistic expectations about what Obama would accomplish and don't seem to understand that the American people just aren't interested in liberal 60's policies updated for the present day.  But I'll be there.  I'll be knocking on doors.  I'll be backing Obama with words and with money.  I'll have the same level of enthusiasm as I had before.  Just like in 2008, Obama won't be anyone I can get excited about.  He's just not my kind of man; he has just a little too much deer in the headlights earnestness mixed with a lack of panache for my taste.  But given the alternatives, I view Obama as the most attractive candidate by far.