Here is No Why

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The Change I'm Hoping for

January 20, 2009 11:56 PM

here's no way that Barack Obama won't disappoint me. I mean, there just isn't. Let's put it this way: I'm sorta disappointed that he didn't reveal himself as the Messiah immediately after taking the oath. But, while I definitely expect more from the man than any human being can possibly deliver, I also recognize that my expectations are ridiculous. If I step back and think about it, I think that President Obama will probably be a very good president, but that he'll make some mistakes. His approval rating will fall from where it is right now, obviously. But I think--I hope, anyway--that it'll be a long time before all the good will and unity that Americans and the rest of the world showed today fades. The last time I felt like so many people were on the same side of something was in the aftermath of September 11th. It's nice to know that something good can bring everyone together, too.

But while I expect a lot from the Obama Administration, and while I think that he's going to go down as one of the best presidents, the thing I'm most excited about doesn't have anything to do with his personality but with one of his best ideas. Specifically, i hope that the divisive, ridiculous, awful politics that have marked the past few presidential terms will come to an end or will, at the very least, diminish.

Tom Brokaw was talking during the inauguration coverage about how the discourse in Washington thirty years ago was just different than it is now. There were Republicans and there were Democrats, but there wasn't the vitriol that defines the two-party system today. That's what Brokaw said, anyway--I wasn't there then, so I don't know.

But even in the short period during which I have been politically aware, things have gone from bad to worse. Bill Clinton is renowned for his ability to reach compromises, but the fact of the matter is that he was also a sleazebag. He should have resigned from office not because he had committed high crimes or misdemeanors but simply because the Presidency--with a capital "P"--is not something you drag through a sex scandal. The fact that his wife was going around accusing people of being part of a vast right-wing conspiracy didn't help.

Neither, of course, did the Congressional response to the whole thing. Just as the person who occupies the Oval Office should have enough regard for the office to keep his business in his pants, the Congress should know that the power to impeach a president should be used only in the most dire circumstances.

And, of course, things only got worse during the Bush Administration. Yes, conservatives played a huge role in that. I mean, the personalities on Fox News are very often nothing short of appalling. And Rovian political tactics . . . . well, they suck.

But Democrats are just as guilty, in my view. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend of mine, and she was telling me that a single friend of hers had met a very nice man. He was polite, successful, attractive, and he treated her well. But, my friend told me, there was a problem. She was a Democrat, and he was a Republican. "How is that a problem?" I asked. And my friend said to me "He's a Republican!" She said the word "Republican" with more hatred than I can muster even for a UPS delivery man. It didn't matter that he was great in every other way, it just mattered, to my friend, at least, that he was a Republican.

This was not an isolated incident. Many of my friends and acquaintances have expressed similar views. And what annoys me is that this view is so clearly, demonstrably false.

No person, party, or ideology has all the answers. As President Obama said today, it's not about big government or small government, safety or freedom, or left or right. It's not about finding the answer and then being smart, loud, persuasive, and numerous enough to convince everyone else. Instead, it's about working together to find the answer, and then working together to implement the answer, and then working together to find new answers to the new problems that come up as a result of the first answer. It's about working together.

I hope that all of President Obama's rhetoric about ending the divisive nature of politics is more than just rhetoric. But even if it isn't, I hope that his election and inauguration themselves are enough to make our leaders and our friends accept--or at least consider--the notion that there is more that makes us the same than that makes us different.