Self proclaimed liberals of America:
I have said it a million and two times. I am probably wasting my keystrokes here, but I feel compelled to say it yet again:
We have to stop worshipping Barack Obama. Like, now.
I don’t include myself in the “we” because I never did worship him. I think if there is any criticism that can be made about me it cannot be said that I lack the ability to see Barack Obama’s flaws. On the contrary some people would probably say that is all I see.
But a lot of that has to do with me feeling the need to counteract the mindless worship that seems to come into play when we discuss him.
And we cannot deny there is a culture that worships Obama. He has been on the cover of Time Magazine more than anyone else in his short political career and clearly became a phenomenon far beyond what most politicians do during his political campaign. News commentators thought his speeches sent tingles up their legs and to criticize him outside of a couple of arenas was asking to be eaten alive early on. 
I believe this is mainly a function of Barack Obama being a symbol, more than a man or a president to some people. They see Barack Obama as a symbol of “hope” and “change” and all those other rather generic buzz words he managed to shove down people’s throats with careful marketing and repetition during his campaign. He somehow was able to inspire people at the tumultuous end of one of the more depressing presidential eras, the Bush years.
But because of this, a lot of liberals are letting him slide on what has been a very lackluster first year as President in my opinion.
Now no one expected Obama to come in with a magic wand and fix everything in a year. Well no one sane anyway, even though his campaign promises damn near sold that dream.
But Barack Obama has not even given a whole hearted attempt to be the agent of change he promised to be because he is too busy trying to maintain his own status as this deified political figure rather than being the President a majority of this country elected him to be.
To start with he has definitely not had as transparent an administration as he promised to have. He promised to post bills on line 72 hours before he signed them and he has not been doing that so far even though the White House blog has found time to pick fights with Fox News.
He has almost completely backtracked on the public option and his inability to be an effective party leader still has the health care bill in a weirdo limbo when it should have been a more organized and concentrated effort that his party could get through Congress without the opposition party.
Speaking of which he also seems to lack the saavy and understanding because of his limited time on Capitol Hill that his opponents are going to stone wall him out of doing whatever he wants because they want to gain back control of government and they know they can’t do that if some of Obama’s policies pass and are successful. The only way to do that is to stand back and watch the Democrats fight each other and brag when they fail. So that is what they are doing.
He has hemmed and hawed on his own war message including doing some strange dance on the Afghanistan issue even though he held on to the idea that this was the “real” war during his campaign. Now that his bluff has been called on that he remains incredibly hesitant on what to do even though he was so sure when it was all just talk.
And he essentially has maintained some Bush era policies (mainly the spending ones) and even kept some Bush era staffers and officials on (Robert Gates for example) instead of cleaning house like many expected that he would when he arrived in DC.
And of course as I mentioned earlier he is wasting precious time criticizing Fox News which in my opinion is not exactly unfair to him beyond it’s commentators who are not news anchors but give opinions and have every right to be critical of him or anyone else if they so choose.
So where do we as liberals come in?
Well, quite frankly, we need to be more critical of President Obama.
I hated President George W Bush more than I ever hated any other United States President and I still maintain he was among our worst.
However you can say one thing about President George W Bush…as wrong as he was on many things and as wreckless as he was, he did what the people who elected him wanted him to do for the most part (besides his atrocious spending habits). And he didn’t give a damn who liked him for it or who didn’t. He came to town to be President and he rode this country till the wheels fell off, literally.
Why can’t President Obama, if his ideas are so great do the same? His cowardice in dealing with his opponents is what makes me dislike him the most. And the free pass other liberals are giving him for being a coward. The constant worship of his complete lack of accomplishment thus far is dismaying because if we continue on this path what will President Obama do to really earn or respect and support, since his dedication to doing nothing already has that?
We need to hold his feet to the fire first.
If you’re tired of Fox News complaining about President Obama, take the mic away from them and complain about him not doing enough to keep the public option alive, not raising taxes on people over $250,000 like he said he would and instead borrowing and running our deficit up. Complain about him bowing to the Chinese and refusing to meet with the Dalai Lama because they told him not to, and because they own a massive amount of our debt. Demand that he stand up and take honest leadership of this party and get the things that we want done. There is much Obama has done that doesn’t line up with the liberal agenda and we aren’t standing up for ourselves here.
We can all respect what Obama stands for as a symbol and still criticize him as a President. But as a symbol alone, he’s worthless.
It’s nice that he is the first black President but that’s not going to solve our problems. It doesn’t even solve the racial problems that we have. It’s just something noteworthy but it’s not getting anything done. He doesn’t even want to take on the black role when he views it as a chance for it to be unpopular for him with his white constituents. He wouldn’t speak out about the violence in Chicago or the Jena 6, but he would waste time having a beer summit over his friend getting arrested more so for being a jack ass than anything else. And he can spend all day telling black people to pull themselves up by their boot straps and quit making excuses, but you’d be hard pressed to find him at a trailer park talking to poor white people the same way.
And if he is not willing to step outside of his own desire to be popular and be this symbolic force in order to get the things done he promised to us during the campaign then we need to make it clear that we are not happy with him.
I want change, but I want someone who is going to get change to happen and not just put it on posters and chant about it at rallies.
I think most of us as his first year is closing down can agree Obama has lost a lot of his mojo and our efforts to elect him if you wanted more than just a black President seems to not have even brought about the beginning of the things we hoped for.
And we can’t stand for that. We have to hold him accountable.
This is why you don’t worship a man.
They are fallible, and sometimes, they need to hear it to get back on track.
HT Lexxi
