Let's get this out of the way up front: no, he's not the golden god too many of us expected he would be. He was never going to be. But whose fault was that? Remember: we endowed him with the "I Got This" aura and then didn't show up to vote in the 2010 midterms. Sure, he kind of embraced the idea in 2008. But what functioning politician wouldn't in the heat of a campaign?
"We have a substantial check here for a Mr. Abraham Simpson."
"That's right, I did the Iggy."
The whole Hope and Change thing--as much opportunistically taken on as it was naively thrust upon--was the Obama Administration's original sin. And like the theological concept, it's outdated and unfair because nothing can be done about it now. But let's check the ledger:
Barack Obama achieved the single most important domestic legislation in a generation, rescued the U.S. Auto Industry, signed fair pair legislation (which had somehow not come to pass until 2009), backed gay rights as thoroughly as any president could, got us out of Iraq, laid the ground-work for the Afghanistan exit, didn't get bogged down anywhere else, and all but dismantled al-Qaeda. You're welcome, right? It's frustrating to me, too, that he's either incapable of or unwilling to tout his credentials well, but that's also part of the reason I like him: his hesitancy to play the game so publicly. You can chalk that up to arrogance (a stupid word to use, anyway, since presidents need to be arrogant), however it's a much more attractive kind of arrogance than that of his predecessor.
There's a thing about the modern American left that nothing ever seems good enough. You've heard it before: we could've had real universal healthcare, etc. First, no we couldn't have. See above about the Lilly Ledbetter Act: it took us long enough to get us something that should've been common sense decades ago--so how much can we reasonably expect? Second, Obama's not a liberal. At least, he doesn't govern as one. He has enough working against him when he doesn't (did you know that he's foreign-born and that he lied about his college grades, or some stupid thing?). See, Obama--like Obamacare--is a bridge to a less insane America, not the new America incarnate. The fact that some don't like these gradual, evolutionary adjustments is part of the reason the left has lost its foothold in the political discourse over the last generation. Yes, this quickly becomes a lesser-of-two-evils argument. It's always a lesser-of-two-evils argument. Nut up and dance with who brung you. Or vote third party.
And the NDAA and the ongoing drone wars? Yeah, okay, those bother me, too. Obama's given himself and future presidents far-reaching tools that should chill every American to the bone. And if he's lost any supporters over these matters, well, I can't fault that too much. However, this is the long-fermenting result of a power-amassing executive branch predicated upon the idea that the American people truck for "strong leadership," an idea that Americans have not generally disputed. But it helps to understand that the bloated security state and foreign policy apparatus exist almost independent of the whims of ideology these days: self-reinforcing structures that no president seems interested in tackling anymore (the last president, to my mind, who came into office with a greater interest in foreign affairs than domestic ones was Nixon). Romney, suffice to say, does not seem inclined to reverse that trend.
So, no. Obama ain't perfect. But we were never going to get perfect. Not in this economic and political climate. On the economy, he inherited an historic financial meltdown that he's mostly steered back to normalcy. It's amazing how easily that's been forgotten: how much can we fairly expect of a president in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the 30's? And, however badly we might be hurting, notice none of us are living in Bushvilles.
Then there's the political climate. Or don't you remember the right-wing opposition that has snarled and gnashed their teeth for four years straight, doing everything they can to halt whatever they think Obama might be up to? An unconscionable congressional opposition that has explicitly made it their mission to destroy him. This is also the first president to have a 24-hour news network dedicated to slandering him. Fox News has raised a yammering army of Obama-deranged personalities for their cause; that a talking cat anus like Donald Trump has been allowed to make himself into a regarded commentator speaks volumes about the dearth of substance in our media. Think about what Obama could've accomplished with the kind of mindless obeisance that Bush II enjoyed at one time. In a robust polity, we would call out the hateful, childish tactics for what they are (political and economic terrorism) rather than rewarding them.
Of course, it could be argued that no man has the answer to being president in the Internet Age, where facts are fuzzy at best and all discourse is subject to the most primal instincts of an angry and imperfectly-evolved species. So on that front, I'm not sure Mr. Romney can hope to fair any better. After all, if the politics of obstruction prove feasible, what's to stop the left from making likewise?
And what of the president's opponent: that grinning parody of every shifting, shameless politician you've ever seen in TV or film. I once called John McCain one of the most cynical men ever to vie for the White House. And, with luck, the Sarah Palin pick will long stand as a high-water mark for miscalculated pandering. But Mitt Romney has found ground even McCain never dreamed of. What we have in Mittens is not an empty vessel of the Palin variety, but of its own, more terrifying kind: one that can be emptied and refilled again and again (sometimes stunningly quickly), never minding the slow erosion of its own self.
Romney, in his businessman-type way, believes that he is a product to be marketed, rather than structurally improved. It's easy to laugh at his tragicomic attempts at humanity, but it's in these moments that we see the truth: there is no there there. He is whatever he thinks will get him the prize. Not the stoic ship captain Obama has been (a trait even Gov. Christie now seems to appreciate), but the hapless, quick to ill-planned action sitcom dad.
And remember that thing I said about dancing with who brung you? President Romney will know that well. He'll have to work with a House and potentially a Senate comprised of the Limbaugh wing of his party. This is the social party of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock. The fiscal party of Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan, Romney's VP and a signer to Norquist's juvenile no-tax pledge (and who publicly admits that he thinks Ayn Rand is a good writer). And then there are the Court appointments, several of which have been dangling for a decade or so as the justices get older.
He'll wear the Moderate Mitt Mask for now--it plays well with the marks in the 'burbs--but at some point he's gotta make good on that selling point about working with legislatures (balancing a state's budget is a lot easier when it's mandated by state law; and while we're here, I seem to recall Bush II touting similar credentials in reaching across the aisle--what is it about Republican governors that makes them think party dynamics work the same in state capitals as they do in Washington?). And the unmoored GOP that shrugged and said "okay, him," will want to cash in their chips for allowing Romney to go up against a president that they themselves had so handicapped. So guess who'll get to pick Mitt's next mask?
Now think on what kind of leverage Obama gets when he returns from re-election, able to look John Boehner square in his orange face and say, "I ain't dead yet, Oompa-Loompa."
Take this as you will. The lesser-of-two-evils. The devil you know. Not the president we deserve but the president we need. It's several parts of each. But in this week when the nation's two major news media centers have been hammered by much larger events (actually, DC got off relatively easy), we're in a place to put this campaign into perspective and think about the role of government as more than a philosophical debate. And, hopefully, with a better understanding of what the choices are.
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