What did you expect?

Barack Obama promised change if he was elected. So, when he got to Washington, he passed a health care reform bill (which people said they wanted), he passed a financial reform bill (which people said was needed to keep Wall Street from repeating its manipulation of the financial markets), he passed a stimulus bill to keep the country from falling into an economic abyss (which it would have). Obama said the real battle against terrorism started in Afghanistan and America needed to finish the job there to protect its national security interest. And so he stayed (as most Repubs wanted him to) but he has made clear it is not an open ended commitment. Nor can it be. Some President must display the leadership necessary to extract us at the right time. Is there anyone better prepared to do that than this President? It certainly would not be John McCain or Sarah Palin or Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee.

So why don’t the polls show his approval ratings at a sky high level?

Because the pundits are yelling and screaming that nothing he has done has made a positive difference, and as if to make all their points with one reference, they conclude by reminding the electorate that the “unemployment rate is still 9.5% and Obama is doing nothing about it.” People like Charles Krauthammer (in today’s Wash Post) point regularly to the Reagan years as the joyful pages of our history. He forgets to tell his readers that Reagan gave us 10 consecutive months of unemployment rates exceeding 10% in the period of 1982-83. He forgets to tell his readers that Reagan tripled the national debt. He forgets to tell his readers that Reagan’s tax cuts did not save the country from TWO recessions in Reagan’s eight years.

Let me be the one to break some sad news to these pundits: The capitalist system on which America runs has cycles. Really? Yes. We are in one now. The economy is retrenching, reshaping, recharging – (capital is chasing goods and services in the same efficient manner it always has), and the economy will come back stronger than before. I would rather have the slow but steady growth that is in the offing than the artificially high growth the Repubs gave us when they encouraged a “hands off” approach to regulation by government agencies in the period of 2001 to 2008.

Obama’s major mistake is this: When Obama came to Washington, he actually thought the Repubs would find some common ground on which to cooperate with him on some issues. He did not realize that the Gingrich acolytes had been schooled well: they were not ever, EVER, going to cooperate with Obama. How else did they expect to regain the power they so desperately seek? If they cooperate, they make him look reasonable (AND he is, of course), and they could not abide that. Obama did not realize that it is power they seek – and only power – and not effective government for the Nation.

Voters, listen carefully to the loudest voices criticizing President Obama right now if you must, but ask yourself these questions: Do you want to re-install the “do nothing party” that brought the Nation to its knees by the end of the Bush years in 2008? Do we want the Gingrich students, who learned “we will NOT compromise” at their master’s knee, put in charge of the Congress again? Or do we want to continue to productively address the major issues that have confounded Americans for decades. That would be asking for leadership. And what’s wrong with that?