Where's the Change?

[Big-K]

Its one year since that magical moment when we elected the first African-American President that will bring about "Change we can believe in". Today rather than look forward, many are looking back at what was a flawless campaign and asking, where is that Obama?

Ariana Huffington captures my sentiments and that of many with the piece quoted below. Even David Plouffe (Obama's campaign manager) has a new book out asking similar questions.

Is this the change we believed in? Where's the 'Audacity"?

Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing
I had arranged to meet David Plouffe on Saturday afternoon at a Starbucks on Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. The night before, a copy of his new book, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory, was waiting for me when I checked into my hotel at midnight. I flipped it open, read a few lines and was hooked. I spent the rest of the night reading it.

Plouffe has written the most important political book of the year (for reasons I'll get to in a moment). It's also completely gripping. It reads like a thriller. Even though you know how it ends, you quickly get caught up in every twist and turn of perhaps the most remarkable campaigns in American history.

Along the way, I found myself tearing up when I read about the campaign volunteer who had scrimped and saved ("Grabbed some ramen on the weekends... Didn't take the girl to a movie") so he could donate ten dollars to Obama, and laughed at the funny-in-retrospect tales from the trail (like David Axelrod's BlackBerry crashing at a crucial moment because of glazed donut getting stuck in the trackwheel.)

But it's not the insider look at the past that makes the book so important. It's what it shows us about the present -- and the effect it could have on the future.

Plouffe's book arrives at a crossroads moment for the administration -- exactly one year after the election, and one year before the 2010 midterms. A lot has happened in that year, as the audacity of winning has given way to the timidity of governing. But in recounting how the campaign team -- and the candidate -- not only had the audacity to win but was able to keep that audacity alive, day in and day out over the long nearly-two-year slog of the campaign, Plouffe has also shown the Obama White House the way forward.

The book is a powerful reminder of what the country voted for last year -- and could serve as the trigger for Obama and his team to refocus and remember why the election mattered so much.

Most of the attention the book has gotten so far has focused on the so-called "sexy" parts -- the saga of Reverend Wright, the furor over Bittergate, how Obama came to pick Biden over Hillary for VP. All of which is serving to obscure the key takeaway from the book: the fact that everything in the campaign flowed, as Plouffe puts it, from Obama's conviction that "the country needed deep, fundamental change; Washington wasn't thinking long-term... the special interests and lobbyists had too much power, and the American people needed to once again trust and engage in their democracy."

Plouffe hits this theme again and again in the book. And it's the first thing we talked about when we met (me looking bleary-eyed from my night of reading and underlining and writing in the margins; Plouffe looking relaxed and refreshed, a far-cry from the profoundly exhausted look he had the last time I saw him, in the midst of the presidential run).

The book is "not a victory lap," he tells me. "It's a reminder of how and why we won. We never forgot why we were running. That was our North Star. And we held that North Star in our sights at all times. We made many mistakes along the way, but we always remembered that we were running because, as Barack put it, the dream so many generations had fought for was slipping away."

Axelrod -- or "Ax" as Plouffe refers to him throughout the book -- summed up at the beginning of the campaign the core elements of the message that would guide them: "change versus a broken status quo; people versus the special interests; a politics that would lift people and the country up; and a president who would not forget the middle class."

Running a different kind of campaign became "shorthand" for the campaign. Whenever they found themselves drifting towards standard political behavior, they'd ask themselves: "If we do this, how is that running a different kind of campaign?"

As Plouffe told me: "We made sure that everyone we hired internalized our core message and defaulted to those touch points when making decisions. For our break-the-rules strategy to work, we all had to remain faithful to its principles all the time."

Plouffe kept returning to the mistakes they made, but only to highlight the campaign's saving grace -- its ability to course-correct, a vital survival mechanism for any successful campaign. Or successful White House.

Early in the book, Plouffe describes a tense meeting with the candidate in April 2007, after it became clear that Obama was having a hard time connecting with voters turning out to see him. Ax, Plouffe, and Peter Rouse were brutally honest with him. And the candidate agreed about the need "to find his authentic voice and reconnect with the fundamental concerns that drew him into the race in the first place. He had run to challenge the bankrupt and conventional politics of Washington, not master it."

Then there was the senior staff meeting after their dismal showing in Pennsylvania, where Obama announced: "I want us to get our mojo back. We've got to remember who we are."

Plouffe also mentions the difficult decision made right before the Iowa primary to decline John Kerry's offer to endorse Obama -- a move campaign insiders felt was the wrong message to send to voters looking for change. "In the end," writes Plouffe, "the tough decision we made was unquestionably the correct one. Just about every time we took the road less traveled, we benefited."

That included the decision, which Plouffe fought hard for, to have the campaign headquartered in Chicago because "D.C. is a swamp of conventional wisdom and insiders that can suck a campaign down, and we needed to think differently." Maybe the answer to the last nine months is to move the White House to Chicago.

Indeed, reading the book, I often found myself wondering what Candidate Obama would think of President Obama. Would he look at what the White House is doing and say, "that's what I and my supporters worked so hard for?"

How did the candidate who got into the race because he'd decided that "the core leadership had turned rotten" and that "the people were getting hosed" become the president who has decided that the American people can only have as much change as Olympia Snowe will allow?

How did the candidate who told a stadium of supporters in Denver that "the greatest risk we can take is to try the same old politics with the same old players and expect a different result" become the president who has surrounded himself with the same old players trying the same old politics, expecting a different result?

How could a president whose North Star as a candidate was that he "would not forget the middle class" choose as his chief economic advisor a man who recently argued against extending unemployment benefits in the middle of the worst economic times since the Great Depression?

I'm referring, of course, to Larry Summers. According to a White House official I spoke with -- later confirmed by sources in the White House and on the Hill -- Summers was against the extension. And it took a lot of Congressional pushing back behind the scenes for the president to overrule him.

And, according to another senior White House official, when foreclosures or job numbers come up at the regular White House morning meeting, Summers' response is that nothing can be done. Nothing can be done about skyrocketing foreclosures or lost jobs.

Nothing can be done -- pretty much the opposite of "Yes we can," isn't it?

According to Plouffe, "reform is in Obama's DNA." Then how do you have in your inner circle a man who has "nothing can be done" in his DNA? Unless, of course, the problem on the table has to do with Wall Street, in which case "everything can be done, has been done, and will be done."

Obviously, an administration needs to hire people who weren't part of the campaign. But the danger comes in hiring those who don't even share the goals of the campaign. That's why The Audacity to Win is so desperately needed right now.

It reminds us that, not that long ago, the conventional wisdom was that Candidate Obama didn't have a chance and that Hillary Clinton's nomination was inevitable. That's the same conventional wisdom that tells us that President Obama doesn't have a chance at really changing things and that the ultimate victory of the entrenched special interests is inevitable.

But the Obama campaign didn't buy into the conventional wisdom then: "We had a mountain named Hillary Clinton in our path that we had to find some way to scale, get around, or blow a hole through," writes Plouffe. And the Obama White House doesn't have to give into the conventional wisdom now. It just has to get its mojo back.

One way the White House can do this is to have everyone there read Plouffe's book, filled as it is with page after page after page of reminders of who put Barack Obama in the Oval Office.

"We knew who we were," writes Plouffe, "a grassroots campaign to the core. We started with our supporters on the ground and they led us to victory." This grassroots effort "was a prime motivator for Obama to run, the belief that the American people needed to reengage in their civic life... Obama felt in his gut that if properly motivated, a committed grassroots army could be a powerful force. Over time, the volunteers became the pillars that held the whole enterprise aloft."

I asked Plouffe what happened to the 13 million people on the campaign's email list -- a list he compares to having "our own television network, only better, because we communicated directly with no filter to what would amount to about 20 percent of the total number of votes we would need to win."

"Volunteers have made 300,000 calls to Congress to support the president's health care plan, and held thousands of events around the country," he told me. "But it's hard to maintain the intensity of the engagement."

Of course it's hard. But, as he puts it in the book, "Obama had ignited something very powerful in young people throughout the country. If that spark could be preserved, I was convinced we'd be a much stronger country for it."

And no amount of rationalizing and sugarcoating can change the fact that the spark has not been preserved. And that we are a less strong country for it.

One of the reasons Plouffe gives in the book for the campaign deciding to forgo public funding was that, as he writes, "most painfully, taking the federal funds meant losing control of our secret weapon: we would have to largely outsource our entire grassroots ground campaign to the DNC." Which is exactly where the grassroots list -- rebranded as Organization for America -- is housed now. Painfully.

Plouffe talks about how the Obama team knew that in order to win, it would have to "attain the holy grail of politics -- a fundamentally altered electorate. We had to expand the electorate or we were cooked." With the help of their grassroots army, they did just that. Among people who had never voted before -- or who hadn't voted for a long time -- 71 percent voted for Obama.

Plouffe feels genuinely connected to the movement he helped unleash. "So many of the people," he told me, "who gave their heart and soul to the campaign were people who had given up on the system because they no longer believed they could trust politicians to deliver or really change anything. It is imperative for our democracy that these people are not disappointed. If they become disillusioned, they won't be coming back for a long while."

"I feel such an obligation to them," Obama told Plouffe during the campaign. "They believe in me. In us. In themselves. What keeps me going day after day? Besides a clear sense of why I am running for president, it's them, our volunteers. It is a special thing we've built here and I don't want to let them down."

I asked Plouffe if the president had read the book. "He read a couple of sections in it," he replied, "and even discovered a couple of things he didn't know."

Well, if the president wants to make sure he doesn't let down the millions who believed he really would change the rotten system, he should read the The Audacity to Win from beginning to end -- and rediscover a whole host of things he knows, but seems to have forgotten.

Then he can complete the journey from The Audacity of Hope and The Audacity To Win to The Audacity to Govern.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ariann..._b_343209.html

[I Love Nigeria]

I will be charitable in saying that President Obama inherited three wars.

1. An economic debacle of global proportions... The Economic Meltdown/Financial Crisis started in the United States

2. Afghanistan/Pakistan spinning out of control .... Afghanistan humbles empires... historically.

3. The quagmire and debacle also known as the unfinished business of the invasion and occupation in Iraq by Bush

All these above challenges have global implications and ramifications

AND, no American president has ever had the singular "fortune" of these multiplicities of inheritances!

He is engaged in delicate balancing acts... he is so measured... almost to the point of analysis paralysis! He needs to show that he is not too tepid, timorous or even timid of actions

President Obama is so entrenched in his "romantic notion" of bipartisanship... even when it has not worked.... the Republicans are only interested in defeating the Democrats in the next election and the next and the next.... Bipartisanship is dead on arrival... see Republican votes on Sotomayor... see Republican votes on Health Care Reform... except for the tentative Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine...

President Obama also need to discipline his Democrats who are all of a sudden Blue Dog/Pink Dog and Yellow Dog .... conservatives.... scheming to defeat and shoot selves in own feet... by vacillating on President Obama's policy pursuits!

Still, Obama needs a more profound and vibrant foreign policy toward Nigeria and all of Africa.... and be more engaged with African Americans... peoples of African descent.... from Antigua to Australia's Aborigines to Bahamas to Brazil's Bahia to Cuba to Jamaica to Haiti to Zungeru etc

[liloldlady]

Anybody can talk a good talk.

[DaBishop]

Originally Posted by liloldlady

Anybody can talk a good talk.

True...
Governments and leadership always involves ...talking a good talk...after having a sound vision that people can follow...the follow-up in the nitty gritty often is the mud wherein the wheels of progress are stuck...

related news...
http://www.newsweek.com/id/195420?GT1=43002

[EezeeBee]

That's a really interesting article!

Immediately after the election, when it seemed the impossible had been done, I gave Obama a little 'breathing space' so to speak since I had woken up daily (and nightly) to devour everything I could on the election battle.

The battle had been won but the war was just starting. I agree that he inherited world scale issues BUT since he was elected in America, by Americans, his primary constituency is and continues to be America.

How are Americans faring? How are they looking forward to the future? Is there any hope for improved lives now and in their retirement? Why, oh why (apart from racism) is it so hard to get Americans to improve their own lives with healthcare and other issues?

These questions mystify me and have really led to my not being very engaged in his presidency over the last year.

I truly hope that like the reviewer and the book author state, Obama will be able to 'return to his first love' - the American people in their good millions, not the fringe radicals determined to defend silly concepts that do no good for the masses.

He had the masses on his side. He should return to and rely upon them.

God bless America (and everywhere else!)

[I Love Nigeria]

Excerpts: 'The Audacity to Win'
By: Mike Allen
November 1, 2009 12:59 PM EST
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.c...EE54B0657A117A

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/books/03book.html

From Mike Alllen’s Playbook, exclusive excerpts from “The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory” — $15.09 on Amazon – by DAVID PLOUFFE, campaign manager of Obama for America:

“The remarkable Obama for President campaign, led by a once-in-a-generation candidate, had the audacity to win — and not just to win, but to do so with guts, defying conventional wisdom again and again. We talked to voters like adults and organized a grassroots movement of average citizens the likes of which American politics had never seen.” (p. 3)

JUNE 2007: “Our research team had put together a document that highlighted the voluminous examples of Hillary Clintons’ expressing tacit support for outsourcing. We knew this could cause huge problems in Iowa with blue-collar voters … The document on outsourcing was titled ‘Hillary Clinton, D-Punjab,’ after an incident when Hillary Clinton was in India and she jokingly told a local official that should be her title because of her ongoing political interest in many things Indian. It was stupid and snarky; these research documents historically do not see the light of day, so communications staff doesn’t treat them as though their language will be repeated. They are considered off-the-record and rarely get sourced. As a result, we were sloppy. But we got burned, and the New York Times broke the story that we were moving the D-Punjab document around the press world. [Jeff Zeleny’s “Political Memo,” at the bottom of A10 on Saturday, June 16, 2007, was headlined, “A New Kind of Politics Closely Resembles the Old.”]

“As soon as we got the first call from the Times we knew we were in deep shit. Our press secretary, Bill Burton, called me with the news as I was landing in Chicago, and my stomach sank. My first reaction was, ‘How on earth could they write a story off a paper that was clearly research, a background document?’ But that was blame-shifting and rationalization. We had clearly screwed up, and in a way that could be uniquely damaging. For other campaigns this would be a blip on the radar. But we had promised a different standard … Obama was predictably furious when I talked to him after getting off the phone with Burton. Worse than that, he was disappointed. ‘This is the first time I was embarrassed by my campaign,’ he said. ‘How could this happen? Is staff going renegade? … I never want this to happen again. … I want controls in place and I want you to take personal responsibility for it. I don’t care what the other campaigns are doing. We can’t use that as a standard. Get control of it or I won’t allow us to send anything but our schedule out to the press.’ …

“He was as short and upset as I had ever seen him. … Poor Gibbs was traveling with Obama and said that Punjabgate put Barack in the foulest mood he’d seen him in three years. … We changed course after this incident and sent out very few research documents; when we did, they were straightforward and fact-based.” (pp. 72-4)

“Acknowledgments: When I sat down to write this book, my experience as a writer was limited to campaign memos and television advertisements. … Bob Barnett, my agent, provided, wise counsel and great advice throughout. … I want to single out David Axelrod and Katie Johnson for additional thanks. We simply would not have been the Obama campaign, or won, without David Axelrod. … David Axelrod and Anita Dunn somehow found the time to read the manuscript and provide incisive guidance … There is no index following these acknowledgments as a recognition that our campaign was not a collection of individuals, no matter how talented, but a tight unit of staff and volunteers.” (pp. 388-9)

© 2009 Capitol News Company, LLC

[N.A.R.]

Originally Posted by Big-K

Its one year since that magical moment when we elected the first African-American President that will bring about "Change we can believe in". Today rather than look forward, many are looking back at what was a flawless campaign and asking, where is that Obama?

Ariana Huffington captures my sentiments and that of many with the piece quoted below. Even David Plouffe (Obama's campaign manager) has a new book out asking similar questions.

Is this the change we believed in? Where's the 'Audacity"?

Big-K
I always laugh when I read such submissions. Because the man campaigned on change, do you think he is a magician? For goodness sake he has only been in office for one year. And he needs to start by taking on eight years of madness and even going beyond that to bring about the "change" that got him into the office.

A big lesson that I think he is teaching America is to back off from the "Instant gratification" lifestyle that we have come to accept as the norm. Change is not instant and does not take place in a year. And as ILN has noted its not like he took office at a time of very few crisis. Here is a man who took office during a recession (said to be the worse since the great depression) and also two wars and has to continue to deal with potential trouble spots like Iran and North Korea. And don't forget that in the middle of all this he is on the brink of achieving for the Democrats what has not been done since I believe FDR. Healthcare Reform.

I see in him a continued risk taker and calculated risk as well. Consider the Healthcare reform on which his presidency will be judged, not Iraq or Afghanistan, as he did not start those wars. But he did pledge Healthcare Reform so he must deliver. Now next year will bring the Congress mid term elections and there is no guarranttee that the Democrats will retain control of both the House and Senate by their current majorities, so if that legislation does not get passed THIS YEAR, that may be the end of that.

By taking on Heathcare Reform alone, he has continued with his change message. And yes we may not get exactly what he wanted, but he will get something that will go down in the history books. And benefit the people. I am not sure if people really understand the benefits they will gain if for example you cannot be turned way due to a pre-existing conditions and other similar reforms.

So Big-K do have no concerns, continue to give him your maximum support he has certainly earned it and continues to earn it. And you will see the dividends at the end of the day, leave those "Indomine Instant noodle" people like Ariana alone!

One last issue, can you see how various world leaders are basically "lining up" to have audience with him to discuss and seek his support and opinions. That itself is a certification of the fact that he has brought change to the world stage.

One more thing to add:
As regards the appointment of Larry Summers. Any leader who only appoints those whom only share their point of view is making a dangerous mistake. Hence Obama's appointing a fellow like Larry Summers should not be taken as a sign of bad judgement.

[I Love Nigeria]

Here is a MINOR correction

President Obama has only been in office for 9 months (Not one year yet)!

He was elected November 4, 2008 and sworn in as president on January 20, 2009... Not quite a year as yet

[busanga]

All these rush to judgement, the guy is not even in office for a year yet..cut him a slack. Arianna would rather prefer John McCain? talk about liberals cutting their nose to spite their face. Obama has achieved more for progressive politics in one year than Bill Clinton did in 8 years! At least, he is yet to screw up healthcare!

[Igboamaeze]

----------

It's obvious that this is a publicity stunt by David Plouffe to market his book. I don't see how Obama or anyone else can change United States of America in 9 months.

It is too early to rush to judgement...

[denker]

Originally Posted by EezeeBee

That's a really interesting article!

Immediately after the election, when it seemed the impossible had been done, I gave Obama a little 'breathing space' so to speak since I had woken up daily (and nightly) to devour everything I could on the election battle.

The battle had been won but the war was just starting. I agree that he inherited world scale issues BUT since he was elected in America, by Americans, his primary constituency is and continues to be America.

How are Americans faring? How are they looking forward to the future? Is there any hope for improved lives now and in their retirement? Why, oh why (apart from racism) is it so hard to get Americans to improve their own lives with healthcare and other issues?

These questions mystify me and have really led to my not being very engaged in his presidency over the last year.

I truly hope that like the reviewer and the book author state, Obama will be able to 'return to his first love' - the American people in their good millions, not the fringe radicals determined to defend silly concepts that do no good for the masses.

He had the masses on his side. He should return to and rely upon them.

God bless America (and everywhere else!)

..in a absolute sense the practical empirical observation may depicts obviousnes which enmeshs itself in a clear unobviousness for those with bogus premeditation of perception factorizing the permutation into a holistical injecting the a well defined commonsensical perception helps to redirect the mind in rightful direction...

...sometimes when the unattentional obviousness comes to become certainly framing on its trajectory to comprehend the magnitude / frequency of a complete instance may enforce unwarranted wrongness of thought which may eventually arrest the mind to give a? correct interpretation/s to given circumstance/s...

..so, mr. EezeeBee gotta good hold of your life and let Obama gotta his own demons...in yours i find no wisdom rather words of a confused child...a child in an attempt to interpret a condition where he lacks the competence...au revoir!

ps: if u no understand, knock yourself out..there's time for every ding...cheers!

[busanga]

And here is Plouffe quick response to Arianna

No Difference Between President Obama and Candidate Obama

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-..._b_343985.html

While I appreciate Arianna Huffington's kind words about my book on the 2008 Presidential campaign of Barack Obama, I could not disagree more with the suggestion that somehow the President Obama of 2009 has lost touch with candidate Obama in 2008.
Frustration about the pace of change, even disagreement on select issues, of course is understandable. But stepping back a bit, as those of us in the Obama orbit have learned to do, reveals an administration that already has made a significant down payment on the change so many fought for last year. I remain confident in the president's unique ability not just to lead us through the many challenges and crises of the moment, but also to accomplish the tough, smart, long-term projects of energy and health care reform -- problems that Washington has long ignored but that will secure a more equitable and prosperous future for all Americans.
During the campaign, the president offered three core promises to the American people. First, he promised to wake up every day thinking about how to improve the lives of the middle class, a task made more urgent by the historic economic calamity that greeted him as he took office. Some suggested that all that could or should be done was to perform triage on the financial system and allow economic events to take their normal course. But the president undertook strong action to stabilize the banking system, as well as the auto industry. These were things he had to do--not things he wanted to do--and of course they had little political upside. But President Obama is a leader; he did not run to occupy the Oval Office but to lead from it, and many times that means playing a bad hand as effectively as possible.
The president's actions to stabilize the banking and auto sectors may well have prevented another Great Depression from visiting this country; certainly these measures avoided additional drastic job losses and foreclosures, of which we have already had far too many.
But while dealing with these crises during his first ten months, the president has kept his sights squarely focused on the middle class. He passed a Recovery Act that saved and created a million jobs--many of these backbone middle-class jobs like teachers, firefighters, and police officers--and made historic investments in green energy and technology jobs. His actions spurred a 73 percent increase in lending to small businesses, allowing them to expand and create new jobs; helped hundreds of thousands of responsible Americans keep their homes; and cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. He's expanded health care for children, passed equal pay for equal work legislation, and expanded stem cell research. And he is now closer than any president in decades to passing health reform that bans insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions, outlaws insurance discrimination based on gender, and caps what patients can be charged out-of-pocket. This effort will be key, because job growth--and the kind of robust economic growth our country needs to create a strong job-producing climate--won't come without finally getting health care costs under control. Health insurance reform is a key piece of job-growth strategy, as employers of every size can attest.
President Obama's second core campaign promise was to make government more transparent and accountable, to rebuild a scared trust that had been seriously eroded. And he has delivered. He closed the revolving door, forbidding anyone who works in his administration from lobbying when they leave their jobs. For the first time in history, names of visitors to the White House will be released, so every American can see which interests and individuals are visiting their government. And the groundbreaking website recovery.gov is allowing Americans to trace every dollar spent and every job created or saved from the recovery act, adding a level of transparency never before seen.
The third core pillar the president offered America was the chance to rebuild and strengthen our relationship with the rest of the world. Doing so would to allow us to solve shared problems and maximize shared opportunities, and to more effectively confront the terrorism and foreign policy challenges faced by the entire world.
He is, of course, delivering on that promise, to a degree even his most hardened detractors would strain to effectively or credibly criticize. The president is winding down the war in Iraq, just as he promised he would during the campaign. And he is working thoughtfully and with great care to determine our next phase in Afghanistan, always keeping the long view in mind. Surely we can all agree this is a refreshing change from the approach to Iraq of six and seven years ago.
Is there much work left to be done? Of course. Is the president satisfied with where we are on jobs? No; the problem weighs on him every day as he works to accelerate job growth and negotiates a cooperative relationship with the private sector, where the bulk of these new jobs must be generated.
The economy is growing again, much sooner than most experts predicted. If growth continues, it should lead to job growth. And the president's bold leadership has played a significant role in our economy starting to right itself.
But he understands that unless we make much-needed progress on health care and energy, we will not be as strong a country in the decades to come as any of us would like. Our future truly depends on finally getting Washington to start confronting long-term challenges instead of ducking them. This is asking a lot. Washington is often reserved when it needs to be bold, and political when it should be addressing substance and principle. It is too often focused on the next election, not the next generation.
This is one of the president's great strengths. All he cares about, no matter the barbs and arrows shot his way, is to finally deliver on health insurance and energy reform so that we can ensure our country's greatness, and provide a solid economic foundation for American workers today and tomorrow.
Arianna Huffington has written much that I agree with. But when it comes to her opinion on the president and his record so far, or her suggestion that there is some great difference between the president and the candidate, I have to register the strongest possible dissent. A year after our historic victory, I have never been more certain that Barack Obama is uniquely suited to lead the country at this unparalleled moment. His values; his ability and desire to think long term; his determination to avoid the easy road of political expedience and to rebuild trust between the American people and their government--these are exactly what American needs right now. As on any journey, there will be twists and turns, ups and downs. But the change so many of us fought for so passionately last year is becoming a reality in front of our eyes, if we focus squarely enough to see it. And when the decisions he is making today finally resolve into a complete picture years down the road, we will find ourselves living in a stronger, fairer, and more prosperous America. And we will cherish the small part all of us played in electing this unique leader, a man befitting this critical moment in our history.


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-..._b_343985.html

[Exxcuzme]

That is the plight of black people, whenever we are in position of authority we are always expected to be superman/superwoman, magician and infallible. Which is why we have to work 2wice than white people.

[Dapxin]

What I do know, incontrovertibly, (allow me to be a little personal here) is that coming from work, TV on, ready to pounce on my bed, the sudden flash of the face of the president of the USA, doesnt necessarily make me go with a Pheeeeeeeeeeeeeew! over the last 9 months.

that's how much change george bush brought...

Given the scale of the mess International Politics was (when is it ever less of a mess?), at the time of changover, I think mr. President Obama's very meausured approach to using POWER! has calmed the tea-pot, in a lot of subtle ways.

Iran? they are still there, but its not as heated up as it was.

Iraq, seems ready to find its soul again.

Afghanistan! well, this topic scares me. you dont fight an idea.... The more I read and follow this, the more I think break-this-code-if-you-can.

local politics? well, capitalism as we know it took a concorde flight to the gate of death the other day and It seems gordon + brown and the cheer force of popularism a la Obama, managed to find a rescue rocket to blow up the concorde's engine. The big question, how healthy is capitalism, when its brought home ?

I think, the greatest advantage of the Obama presidency, lies in the seeming capacity of this candidate to reinvent how America sees it, governs itself, and rescues itself. If in doubt, you go back to the cheer force of that ingeniously named debacle - that professor + policeman brouhaha, so deftly resolved by BeerPlomacy.

Obama, has not been too afraid to challenge hitherto, established white-house tendencies. huge plus.

So far, I score the boy 4 out of 10.ish and its only 9months. Thats a pass.

edit.....what was the alternative by the way 9months ago from America ? that woman....

[Auspicious]

+

Time, indeed, doth flieth.

Later tonight, it would have been Three Hundred and Sixty Five days since a generous Big-K (who was kind enough to share a rally ticket with me) and I met up in downtown Chicago to join hundreds of thousands of others to celebrate an improbable achievement by multitudes of Americans of various backgrounds, who agreed with then candidate Barack Obama that America desperately needed change. These people proceeded to effecting that change through his election as the first African-American President in US history. In accepting the win on behalf of his supporters, he said the victory belongs not to him, but to "you" - meaning, the throngs who heard him and fought to put him at the helm of affairs of the United States of America.

The stock-taking by those who have invested their physical and emotional energy, their pennies and dimes, along with hopes and aspirations for themselves and the American society in Mr. Obama started, not after his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, but right at that moment where, day in and day out, we saw the soon-to-be-sworn-in President-Elect give press conferences after press conferences to instil confidence in a country whose citizens had practically abandoned all trust in the outgoing government. As banks fell after banks, and coporations toppled one after the other, along with job losses skyrocketing, Obama took charge of the busiest transition in recent memory, hitting the ground running.

He was up and presidential everyday, not only to speak to events as they rolled in, but to show he was working on putting a cabinet together that consisted MOSTLY of tested and trusted brains. Leaders are supposed to give a sense of confidence and stability when all else aroound seems to be crumbling, and that he did with these media availabilities prior to the transfer of power. By the time he was sworn-in as President, he was knee-deep in it all, so much so others were beginning to admonish him not to take too much at a time. Nobody knows how bad things would have been if those first few months were spent doing their bidding, but were it not for the first days of proactive multi-tasking, we just might be telling a different story by now.

Americans are naturally an impatient people. And perhaps their impatience is a good thing considering that it puts enough pressure on their leaders to perform or get the hell out of the kitchen - well at least compared to elsewhere where people have a noted tendency not to hold their leaders accountable even when they fail to deliver, but instead resort to praying to God where God has already empowered them as the architects of their own destinies. For countries where the system works as it does in America, it won't be an exergerration to claim that development and progress is as commonplace as it is because the expectations and standards are as high as they are - even if unreasonably high at times.

Yet, a time comes when people need not act in a way that amounts to sheer self-deception. The system as it currently exists in America today took decades, if not centuries, to build. And within that system, sits entrenched, habits and ways that requires more than some new President bull-dozing his way through because he was privileged to get the accent of a majority of his fellow citizens to change the powerful status-quo of greed and unfairness that reign supreme in many places across the land. Were the Obama Administration to embark on such an approach, it would simply play right into the hands of those who want to go to war with him, and detract from the delicate intricacies that need to be painstakingly resolved - piecemeal.

Again and again, the Barack Obama told those who paid any attention to him that "change will not be easy". "We may not get there one day", he said, assuring Americans that it would be an uphill battle that will come with frequent disappointments, but that as long as people do not give up on themselves, they will inch towards that progress. But what we see now is that after 9 months of intense governing that hardly any President has had, people like Arianna Huffington are asking where the beef is at, forgetting that this man is not the President of the Arch-Liberal Democrats alone, but the President of the entire consituency that include Democrats, Liberals, Independents, Conservatives and of the UNITED States of America.

The job of running any such diverse society as the United States is a job that for the most part weakens one's 'mojo' (no matter who you are), as opposed to strenghtenening it. The President has to be (unlike former President W. Bush) seen to be listening to ALL sides of the debate, for, just as nobody is totally right all of the time, nobody is ever wrong all of the time. And in the process of juggling such a role as Obama's, he loses varying amounts of his (rational and/or irrational) support, which is normal for just about any fair-minded leader. At 57% approval rating while taking on such terribly divisive issues as he's undertaken since his inauguration, Mr. Obama must be doing something right as the 44th President.

Take the issue of the ongoing healthcare reform debate. Majority of Americans support the idea that America is due for such reform, but even though it is just and right for such a reform to be implemented, it will never be easy, considering that the struggle for this reform has outlived many Presidents before Obama - it's been a 50-year struggle! That should give anyone a sense of how powerful certain forces in the country are. Yet, Barack Obama has not only promised that his presidency will be the last to be defeated in the battle to see through a healthcare reform bill, but has actually gone farther than ANY American President has done in the history of the struggle for healthcare reform - people should think about that!

But, no, Ms Huffington has made the issue of Mr. Summer's powerful presence in Barack Obama's cabinet the fulcrum of her criticism of Obama and Company. What, would she rather Mr. Obama constitute his cabinet as a cronies-only cabinet? Or Ms. Huffington really, really believes, that Mr. Summers truly has nothing to contribute in terms of brains to the Administration (because Summers said what she said he said)? Well, if so, let Ms Huffington think again, for right in this same cabinet, we have Hillary Clinton doing a remarkable job as Secretary of State - the same Hillary who, with eyes blazing on a Sunday afternoon a little over a year ago, yelled to the world "Shame on you Barack Obama!".

It is to Mr. Obama's credit that the 'bad ones' of Larry Summer's ideas or sugggestions have been repeatedly rejected - forget the 'somebody-saids' that Obama was leaning toward Summer's ideas until pressure was brought to bare upon him. If anything, people should be glad that they have a listening President in that man, unlike the other fellow who prefered to listen to people who dumbed-down brains and intellectualism in the White House. Some of us keep abreast of most daily developments of this administration and, while I have my moments of frustration with this same government, I have other moments when I am full of praises for the government - its openess, its innovation etc are visible everywhere from recovery.gov to data.gov, forget whitehouse.gov

As the election results trickled-in from the few races that took place across the country yesterday, political spinners and talking heads began to make convenient statements to the effect that those races featuring terribly weak individuals (New Jersey's Gov. Jon Corzine and Virginia candidate for Governor Creigh Deeds) amounted to a referendum of sorts on the leadership of Barack Obama, neglecting the fact that majority of Americans, according to polls, still show that in spite of their rejection of the aforementioned candidates, were quite positive that the next year or so (under Obama's leadership) will be better than today. Those who underestimate Obama's candidacy on the basis of the losses in NJ and VA do so at their own peril. You watch.

And, by the way, if there was any good proof of the reason why the Democrats needn't put their energy in promoting weak candidates against better judgement, it was shown yesterday. Weak incumbents like New Jersey's Jon S. Corzine and New York's David A. Paterson are just bad news, sorry to say, for the Democrats as a party. It would take nothing short of a miracle for Governor Paterson to survive when election day comes at an approval rating that registered at 17% a few weeks ago. Governor Corzine was in the same boat not too long ago, and today, he got his butt kicked real hard by Chris Christie who, I guess, 'threw his weight' around hard enough to make Jon Corzine lose his only weight as Governor. And there we have a lesson for NY Democrats as Judgement Day approaches.

In the meantime, back to the subject, this is NOT to deny the Huffingtons out there of their right or place of protest or grumble about the slow-grinding wheel of progress that currently exists. On the contrary, it is rather a rational argument for Americans to get realistic already. It is plain foolhardy to expect "change" to be effected as radically as the likes of Huffington expect - not if she wasn't talking about coins, anyways. Yes, the Obama Administration needs a little more spine in telling its own stories rather than Sarah Palin doing the job. Yes, Obama and Company should quit treating Olympia Snowe like she was an Olympian goddess. Yes, Obama himself needs to weild the Big Stick every once in a while. But for God's sake, nobody said this was going to be as easy as 9 months puh-leeeze!

Auspicious.

[Mikky jaga]

Please, give him more time. He may be another go-slow president.