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Obama: Stuck in the Middle With You

Less than a year ago I was new to the DC area, and was one of the luckiest people on Earth. I was getting the chance to be one of over a million people to witness history: the inauguration of the first black American president. Not only was this moment racially important - it was pretty much all around important. It was a move that was to signify a shift in American politics and in American life in general. People were once again going to feel a sense of pride in their country. Murals were erected in Obama's honor. His face was seen on the caps and tee-shirts of people from every age, race and nationality. His election win was celebrated throughout the world and revered as the dawn of a new era. This was why I was so lucky. This was less than a year ago.

Today, a mere nine months later and it seems like things have totally changed. As may have been expected, the right wing basically lost their minds. Something as non-partisan as health-care reform has managed to turn into an excuse for crowds of conservatives to descend upon DC, holding signs of Obama altered to look like Hitler or the Joker, making cheap stabs at Senator Kennedy's death within days of his passing and making not-too-subtle remarks about a brewing revolution if "you Democrats don't step down."

It's hard to say what these people are really protesting. As many have offered, it may be a racial issue. They can't accept a black president. While this may be true in the minds of many a non-Obama-supporter, I view this as being to simple of an answer. And I rarely accept the simplest answer as the true one when it comes to politics. Is it the 24 hour media cycle, giving any lunatic with good ratings the premier air time?? Now we may be onto something! Let's look at the recent "Tea Bagging" (does that sound dirty to you, too?) protest mentioned above. The orchestrator of this event was none other than Fox "news correspondent", Glenn Beck. If one person with an hour long daily tv program can get 65,000 (not a million, as Fox claims...sorry I take the DC Fire Department's word over Fox News') to march on the Capitol, imagine what an endless stream of Becks, O'Reillies and all their buddies can do.

And for once, I can admit that the conservatives are not the only ones to blame here. The left wing has been just as vicious and unfair to Obama as the right wing has been. The right wing is expected to push this hard against Obama. I admit, I hardly expected the amount of push back that has happened and for "respectable" Congresspeople to act like bafoons (You lie!) and refuse to work together to get anything done, but it's not that surprising that it's happening. I almost wish the Democrats had fought this hard against Bush!

The real surprise here is the left's reaction to Obama. While he is trying to fight back/work with the right, the left has begun to fault him for being a sitting duck. He's hasn't changed anything. He's not doing enough. He hasn't done anything. How can he do anything with the right pushing so hard, so unbelievably and inexplicably hard against every move he attempts to make??  This is a question the left seems to be unwilling to ask themselves.

I'm not sure what to make of it quite yet.  Is the left keeping the pressure on him as a way of saying, "You may have won the vote, but it doesn't end there!  You've got a lot of campaign promises to keep!"?  Or are they turning their backs to the person that was once their shining hope?  

Whichever it is, it seems that everywhere I turn these days, someone is attacking something Obama has attempted to do or hasn't done yet.  In this environment, it seems impossible to get anything done.  I've read articles about America's turn to fanaticism on both the left and right and this seems to be a perfect example of it.  With one side pulling just as hard as the opposite side it seems that moving forward and backward is impossible and that we are left with one option only: to stay in the same place we are in now.  While other politicians gear up for next year's elections, this may come across as a positive strategy.  But for the average American - the voter - this is doing absolutely no help whatsoever.  This is not what we voted for.  We voted for hope, for change.  At this point I'm just hoping the left and the right will give just an inch for some kind of change.