For some six years I wondered where President Bush could be found while his policies and their enacted consequences jammed the airwaves. Did he really just emerge from the White House to mount the transportation that got him home to Texas? It certainly seemed so.
This president barely body-warms White House upholstery. As I watch him right now he is standing before House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore, taking questions. Meanwhile, I know journalists and professionals I respect and faithfully read, are busy composing another blogpost about Barack Obama’s failure to crystallize his message, let alone his manhood. Wimp is a word I’ve bumped into more than once.
Barack Obama as president does seem to equivocate on issues and priorities that most of us thought were set in concrete in his campaign. But that’s an easy defense: there’s no more succinct definition of American politics. Promise change- deliver it diluted in the soup of compromise. Only dictators get real results.
After reading his books, I began to fancy the idea that the audacity of hope that may have irretrievably settled in Obama’s marrow is the notion that it is always possible to “call out the better angels” in any man. Enough of us are unwilling to even entertain the possibility (rough, tough and ready to rebuff under any circumstance: now that’s a man). One blogger even suggested that Barack Obama, though noble and intelligent, is not presidential material, and I won’t quarrel with that: seeing what I have seen of that strut the stage since JFK was shot crumbles the criticism into a compliment.
But Barack Obama is the current president and he consistently pushes his person out in front of diverse pockets of this country’s body politic, some noxious, some benign.
For that, I remain grateful, and though quivering of late, steadfast.