One Year Ago Tomorrow

What a difference a year makes. One year ago tomorrow, this country witnessed a historic event, the inauguration of Barack Obama as our first African-American President of the United States. It was an exhilarating event held the day after Martin Luther King Day, the timing being particularly significant. It seemed so utterly appropriate that our first black President would take office on the heels of a day meant to honor a Nobel Peace Laureate who gave his life in the name of civil rights for black people. I took the day off work to be witness to this event, even if it meant seeing it on television from the warmth and comfort of my mom's house, since she has a larger TV than I do.

I think now that we put far too great a burden of hope on Obama, even though his entire campaign was built on the themes of hope and change. I think that most Americans assumed that he could fix what was wrong overnight and get us back on the right track again, but a year later, there is a great malaise over the land and a rising tide of populist anger over Wall Street and Big Auto bailouts, executive bonuses, the potential of paying higher taxes for things like a deeply flawed health care reform bill and other things.

There is a group of people around the country calling themselves Tea Partiers, who are anti-tax and anti-government and seem to think that they reflect the sentiments of our Founding Fathers regarding how this country should be governed. What they seem to fail to realize is that the mess we are in is a direct result of the party they seem to support, the GOP, whose mismanagement of things for the eight years they were in power in Washington led to the current fiscal crisis gripping this country. Their laissez-faire attitudes regarding our financial system is what led to its near collapse last fall and I suppose most people assumed that Obama could fix things in his freshman year in office, not realizing that it took eight years to get us into this mess and it may take at least a decade, if not longer, to get us back out of it again, according to respected financial analysts.

Unfortunately, these Tea Party types are loud and strident and have people like Sarah Palin on their side. I suspect her new position as a correspondent for Fox News is being used as a possible springboard to a Presidential run in 2012, and what's scary is that she may well win against even someone as popular as Obama, whose first year in office has been less than what many people expected. What I think he needs to do is to quit trying to be so conciliatory toward those whose aim is to destroy him and his agenda and show some spine and stand up to those people in order to put forth his agenda.

It's become patently obvious that his hopes for changing the tone in Washington are not going to happen. It has become far too bitter and partisan a place and the entrenchment along party lines is deeper than ever. Neither side wants to work with the other, and so, nothing can get done in a poisoned atmosphere like that. Republicans have made it patently clear that their sole aim is to take down Obama and destroy him and do their utmost to prevent him from being a successful President. It's just a shame that they may well succeed in so doing. I predict a one term Presidency for Obama unless he stands up to the opposing party (and the Blue Dogs among his own party) and shows some spine about getting his agenda through. He's already lost most of the independent voters who got him to the White House as well as the more liberal members of his own party who feel like he sold out on too many things.

I still support him, but I worry about this year's midterm elections being a referendum on his administration and a rising tide of conservative populism that may well lead to a GOP takeover of both Houses of Congress, thereby frustrating and threatening Obama's agenda for the remainder of his term. I hope I'm wrong, but I sense a great deal of dissatisfaction among many people right now about the way this country is headed. Unless this administration can make more tangible progress this next year toward fixing our ailing economy, no good will come of things in the midterms. And that does not bode well for the 2012 Presidential stakes, either.