To any undecideds, I say four more years

The Greater Fool is actually an economic term. It's a patsy. For the rest of us to profit we need a Greater Fool. Someone who will buy long and sell short. Most people spend their lives trying not to be the Greater Fool. We toss him the hot potato. We dive for his seat when the music stops. The Greater Fool is someone with the perfect blend of self-delusion and ego to think that he can succeed where others have failed. This whole country was made by Greater Fools. --from Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom


A funny thing happened on the way to the office. As I sat waiting for a green light, the passenger in the truck next to me got my attention. Thinking something might be wrong, I unzipped my window to the very original joke of, "I thought you would want to know: someone put an Obama sticker on your car." Never being one of witty retort (maybe I am just too analytically inclined), all I could come up with was the dry and very real truth: "Yeah. That was me." Clearly out of pithy one-liners, he closed with a "Thought you'd need to know." Since that happened Saturday morning I have spent the vast majority of my time letting all the things I should have said float into my consciousness. Even during the rest of my drive (while I was replaying Kermit the Frog and Seth Myers's "Really?!?!" sketch from Weekend Update last year), I was coming up with things to say; full of snark, mean-spirited, humorous (at least in my own mind). But, what I should have said was very simply, "It's President Obama."

I put a lot of this new and disrespectful trend of saying our leaders' names colloquially on young liberals during President Bush's time in office. Maybe they didn't know any better as this was the first time they felt they needed to stand up and be counted against an administration whose views they did not share. That does not matter, though... He is the President, and you are to speak of him and the office with respect. While liberals might have used President Bush's last name in ignorance and without respect, it seems to me that many conservatives today (particularly those who identify with the Tea Party movement) use President Obama's name with a combination of disrespect and hatred that simply does not belong in our American discourse. The last time, I checked government should be by the people and for the people, and when your political party wins or loses you treat the other side with the respect you would like to be treated with... I think there is some sort of Golden Rule about that, but in full disclosure it has been a while since I set foot inside a church. Either way, my President is your President too, and there is nothing or no one from whom we need to "take our country back" unless we have been invaded by Canada overnight--in which case, let's run those LaBatt Blue-drinking tundra-trudgers back across the border.

In case you are arriving at this one man show late, here is some information on my politics you might need to know: when I first became interested in politics I would describe myself as a conservative. Once President Bush had our country's sons and daughters invade Iraq for no good reason, I started to see things a little differently. Do not think that I am some anti-war hippie (I am admittedly a pacifist, but that is neither here nor there and there is a big, bad world out there in which not everyone shares our goals of peace and prosperity); I have been for the War in Afghanistan since about o-nine-hundred on September 11th, 2001. I will be for it until the job is done for lack of a better word, and if you are not sure why you can look up who gave the Taliban their guns in the first place. That said, if we keep getting involved in nation-building (also for lack of a better word) and then leave when everyone gets bored of it, we will have a couple of more Afghanistans on our hands. Anyway, while I am socially liberal but fiscally conservative, I have never let a political party tell me who to vote for, nor will I ever vote for a party alone--I vote for a person.  If you would like some examples, here you are: I love Senator Rubio (though I voted for Governor Crist because we need a few more I's next to names in Washington). I can't stand Senator Reid. I love the President, but I fear Congresswoman Pelosi with her crazy eyes. I will never belong to a political party. I am more than one thing, and I do not feel compelled to paint myself with such a simple, broad brush of certainty when the world is way too complex for one side or the other. 

"Now, let me be clear," I will be the first person to say that I drank the Kool-aid like nobody's business four years ago during then Senator Obama's campaign for the White House. There was a style and tone to his rhetoric that I think this country needed then and I still think it needs today. But, as so many on the right have been quick to point out, rhetoric on a campaign trail does not convert to action and success inside the beltway. He said he was going to throw out special interests and lobbyists, close down Gitmo, balance the budget, reform our immigration policy and enforcement, and re-shape the way Washington does business. Obviously, we are still waiting for a few of these things to happen, but this is the real world and we can't expect everything to get done at once. For what it is worth, I do believe he will get more of these things done in a second term. And, while so many on the right would say nanny-nanny-boo-boo to me because this President's "socialist policies" (really?!?) have failed, I would say to them that having lefty policies is not why they see this Presidency as a failure. It is because he got into office with a Democratic majority in Congress and a referendum from the country to fix it all at once and what did he do when he got there?!? He ran to the middle of the road. Then, instead of compromising and governing with the other side, he allowed the Democratically-controlled Congress to take the ball and run with it flushing all his good will from the 2008 campaign down the toilet. They (Senator Reid and Congresswoman Pelosi) basically told the American people and any Republican representatives that "we are in charge so get used to it." In response, you have the rise of the Tea Party and elected officials like Senator McConnell who actually said that "our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term." 
Well, at least he said President Obama, but how can we expect the President to meet any conservative in the middle with an attitude like that? 

When you are an elected official you have a duty, a privilege, and an honor of working with other elected officials to find common ground. Maybe one of these centuries that will happen again, but there seems to be a tone of hate in our discourse that was not always present. The people on the left seem so disrespectful of the right, while the right seems so angry about every little thing out there. Have you listened to any conservative talk radio? I do not know how those guys stay so angry all the time. I am sure it is just as bad on Air America, but I don't get that on my radio dial so I'll just have to assume it is. It is all just really sad to me how little governing actually occurs these days. 

Well, I am supposed to be using this time to explain why I think four more years of President Obama's policies would be a good thing for you, but that is not necessarily what I think. I don't necessarily think that his policies would be good for me and my family for the next four years. That said, I do think the President will do a better job for the country (all 300 million of us) and the world (all 7 billion of us). I feel that way because we are in this together. We live in a national and global community where we can give a hand up rather than a hand out. If that means some of us have to pay a little bit more so more kids can go to college or more workers have bridges to build, so be it. If that means we can drop a few more cases of food into a war zone (along with our guns when needed) then I am for that, too. And, one day when I am rich (we can hope right?) I plan on paying a little extra in taxes to pay for the things that everyone needs, because that is the only way it is going to work.

Hope & Change and big ideas take time to work. They take a lot longer than four years to right a ship especially in a society that wants (and can usually get) everything to happen instantaneously. Patience is a virtue, and I feel this President has earned our patience while he continues the work of this great nation both here and abroad. President Roosevelt's policies didn't work overnight either, and President Obama's may not come to fruition until he is out of office; however, they can lay the ground work for a 21st Century that is better for all of us: the 100%. That is why he is my President (and yours), and I hope this Greater Fool continues to be for the next four years as well. 

President Barack Obama remains the right man at the right time.  

We're for freedom of speech everywhere

"We're for freedom of speech everywhere. We're for freedom to worship everywhere. We're for freedom to learn for everybody. And because in our time, you can build a bomb in your country and bring it to my country, what goes on in your country is very much my business. And so we are for freedom from tyranny, everywhere, whether in the guise of political oppression, or economic slavery, or religious fanaticism. That most fundamental idea cannot be met with merely our support. It has to be met with our strength. Diplomatically, economically, materially. And, if Pharaohs still don't free the slaves, then he gets the plagues or my cavalry, whichever gets there first.... No country has ever had a doctrine of intervention when only humanitarian interests were at stake." 

This is not at all something I take lightly.  The loss of any human life should not be taken as such, and when there is a systematic approach to taking human life the only action for a super power is to see that those taking life should be stopped and held responsible. The above quotation was written by Aaron Sorkin during season 4 of "The West Wing" where a genocide was taking place (think Rwanda) in a small African nation. This was President Jed Bartlet's response in the episode entitled 'Inauguration: Over There.' For months I have been looking for anyone in the our government to take any interest in the the thousands of lives lost in Syria, so much so that I was even hopeful that some Republican presidential candidates would step to the plate to ask the current commander-in-chief to act. So I was quite pleased last week when the Syrian government tentatively agreed to allow the United Nations to step in with a cease-fire. That said, the government was still attacking its citizens a week before the agreement was to "take hold." (USA Today, 7 April 2012) 

My position on intervention might surprise some of you as I am sure most of you see me as a bleeding heart liberal who doesn't think American fighting men and women and their guns should ever step foot in a foreign country. Certainly that has been my position since the Iraq war started in March of 2003 and "ended" in May of 2003. Unlike some hypocrites and panderers in Congress I really was against the war and never was for it. Afghanistan is another issue... The appeasing attitude of hate held by the Taliban created an atmosphere ripe for al-Qaeda to murder a few thousand of my fellow citizens so I will always be for (for lack of a better word) the war in Afghanistan; especially since we screwed it up the first time around in the 1980s. It is time we get this one right, and I do not care how long it takes. We do need to realize though that it is a country dominated greatly by regional tribalism and perhaps our brand of democracy does not have to be theirs as well--different strokes for different folks. 

Back to Syria. The AP is reporting today that "the U.N. Security Council voted Saturday to expand the mission to 300 members in hopes of salvaging an international peace plan marred by continued fighting between the military and opposition rebels." Apparently the "onus" is on Syria, but at a certain point we need to say enough is enough. Even though as one of my Facebook friends Jon Paul pointed out that we won't intervene in a country's affairs if they don't have natural resources we require for our day to day lives, we certainly should when humanitarian issues are at stake. I expect more out of my government, my President, and my fellow Americans--call me pie in the sky and naive, but that is just out I feel. 

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h7LPUIN4gT_afX0Q_Viu7GsRPn4g?docId=678f23fb4d554e23bc2a836cca979f86