Frank Schaeffer call it like it is:
Before he'd served even one year President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted Left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled Right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds --- including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious Rightwing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter --- are sticking with our President. Why? Because he is succeeding.
We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good and uniquely qualified man to lead us.
Obama's steady supporters will be proven right. Obama's critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst...
Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any President led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any President faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition - from both the Right and Left.
As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the Left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.
The Left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy" --- snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn't have anything to do with it!
Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:
An ideologically divided country to the point that America was really two countries
Two wars; one that was mishandled from the start, the other that was unnecessary and immoral
The worst economic crisis since the depression
America's standing in the world at the lowest point in history
A country that had been misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war
A health care system in free fall
An educational system in free fall
A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing)
An impasse between culture warriors from the Right and Left
A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally irresponsible Bush administration…
What did the Republicans and the religious Right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists --- that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office --- do to "help" our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn't a real American, didn't have an American birth certificate, wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was a white-hating "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, (!) and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the elderly!
They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized "tea parties" to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well-financed) "commentators" from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.
The utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a President who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: "No!"
In other words the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far Right,combined with the educated but obtuse neoconservative war mongers, religious Right shills for big business, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them: their desire to stop an uppity black man from succeeding at all costs!
What did the Left do to help their newly elected President? Some of them excoriated Obama because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he'd inherited from the worst president in modern history!
Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President's economic policies had "failed" before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they'd been "betrayed"! (Never mind that Obama's vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other President's has been. Never that mind he signed a new hate crimes law which included language punishing hate crimes against homosexuals for the first time!)
Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on Election Night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they'd not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the "change"? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!
And the legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… "Governing"?! What the hell does that world, uh, like mean?"
The President's critics Left and Right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then, of course, there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn't imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren't as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their President. He hadn't consulted them, had he? So he must be wrong!
Meanwhile back in the reality-based community --- in just 12 short months --- President Obama:
Continued the draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Restored America's image around the globe
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Banned torture of American prisoners
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Stopped the free fall of the American economy
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Stood up for educational reform
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Won a Nobel peace prize
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that 7 presidents had failed to even begin
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Responded to hatred from the Right and Left with measured good humor and patience
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Stopped the free fall of job losses
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far Right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the "blood of tyrants" needing to "water the tree of liberty"...
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly
(But that wasn't good enough for his critics)
After Obama has served two full terms, (and he will), after his wisdom in moving deliberately and cautiously with great subtlety on all fronts --- with a canny and calculating eye to the Possible succeeds, (it will), after the economy is booming and new industries are burgeoning, (they will be), after the doomsayers are all proven not just wrong but silly: let the record show that not all Americans were panicked into thinking the sky was falling.
Just because we didn't get everything we wanted in the first short and fraught year Obama was in office not all of us gave up. Some of us stayed the course. And we will be proven right...
Amen.
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7595
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