Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Yes We Can, and Yes We Have

President Obama campaigned on the idea that we were who we were waiting for. He sowed seeds of hope across racial, ethnic, gender, economic and generational boundaries. He took on the culture of class warfare that Rovian politics had perfected, long since put into motion by Nixon 40 years earlier. And, largely, he has fulfilled those promises.

In less than one year in office, he has ended torture, even it means that Gitmo stays open as he deals with the enormously difficult task of closing it; he has unwound the unitary executive, with its claims of near-dictatorial powers over American citizens (and over anyone in the world); initiated the legal steps needed to investigate, prosecute, and convict Bush administration war criminals; started the process to try Khalid Sheik Mohammen in US Court, which will reveal how horribly sadistic the Bush/Cheney regime has been, and how badly it undermined our efforts against Islamist jihadism. Additionally, he has increased military pressure against al Qaeda in Pakistan, even though it comes at a troubling cost to civilians; he has made it clear that we will leave Afghanistan with guns blazing -- a surge, lots of new troops, and strategic shifts. And Iraq has nailed down elections in March, even though that situation there remains tenuous in the extreme.

Obama has bailed out banks and come in $200 billion under budget; overseen the turnaround of the economy from tailspin to stabilization, with the prospect of job growth in 2010. The stock market is robust and at levels no one would have predicted last year. Interest rates remain at historic lows and home ownership is on the rise (and prices inching upward). Obama has ushered in new infrastructure programs and has done more to move the country into the modern era around alternative energies than what might have come out of Copenhagen this past month. He is this close to universal health insurance, with a promised deficit reduction! No president in the past 60 years has managed this (not even the centrist Clinton). The acceptance of gay civil unions and marriages is slowly growing across the country. The war on drugs is unravelling, as more and more states understand its futility; California has more pot available than Amsterdam!

Relations with the Russians have improved to the point where substantial gains can be made to halt nuclear weapons proliferation. Israel is moving, however reluctantly, to a two-state solution. Iran is crumbling more and more every day, thanks to growing paralysis in the regime, and its growing fear of its own people due to the ongoing revolution. And, finally, Obama has helped improve global opinion of the U.S. since his speech in Cairo and his Nobel acceptance speech in Oslo (all the while enduring withering criticism from both right and left). And he has done this with a minimum of the rancorous partisan bickering that so characterized the Bush White House and his minions in the GOP-led Congress, and without the support of the mainstream media that regularly create headlines suggesting the country is disintegrating and that Stalinism is imminent. His pragmatism, his sincerity, and his insistence that deals be made to consider the views of the large part of our country that did not vote for him have combined to create meaningful progress toward the kind of country we can all be proud of and at peace with. Lingering doubts remain on both sides, but any president undertaking the kinds of changes Obama has begun this year had to anticipate this. Aside from a few missteps along the way, his entire administration has been on point from the start.

I am gladly "in the tank" with this president. I remain very optimistic that he will continue to succeed, and that the partisan attempts to derail his accomplishments will fall flat so long as the accomplishments produce real results. I will continue to hold him accountable to ensure that future threats to our Constitutional democracy are eliminated, and that previous crimes committed in the prosecution of the war are fully investigated and brought to justice in an impartial manner.

I know hope today.

Those on both sides of the spectrum who believe he has either destroyed the country or not gone far enough to implement the progressive agenda are missing the point. Sullivan said it best:

Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it.

Yes, we have. And yes, we still are the ones we've been waiting for - if we still care enough to swallow purism and pride and show up for the less emotionally satisfying grind of real, practical, incremental reform.

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