007
Charter Member
Sometimes greatness is hard to see up close, and it takes the distance of time to really appreciate it. With Barack Obama, no distance is necessary - he makes decisions quickly that need to be made quickly, deliberates when deliberation is called for, and the results are usually superb on matters internal to the Executive branch or in relating to the public.
When we had a Democratic Congress, he accomplished more in a few months than had been accomplished in eight years of Republican quasi-dictatorship, and even with a Congress in GOP hands - in the hands of psychotic criminal fanatics who would rather destroy America than be denied control of it - he manages to accomplish more than one would think possible in the face of people who who would call him a liar and threaten impeachment if he said the sky was blue.
Frankly, I don't know of anyone - of any party or no party - that I would rather have in the White House at this time. We are simply at one of those rare instances in history where someone is right where they're supposed to be, even if Congress has fallen back into the Orwellian nightmare Bush-world we had so recently escaped from. So, I would like to see what more this President can accomplish with a Democratic Congress again.
I'm realistic about the arithmetic of achieving it, but Republican self-destruction has been known to yield unexpected gifts to a hopeful and watchful America. Anyway, this has certainly been the best presidency of my lifetime - far beyond the jingoistic muppetry of Ronald Reagan, the patrician monarchy of HW Bush, the desperation of Bill Clinton to make Republicans like him, and of course, the mass-murdering psychopathic dictator George W. Bush.
Barack Obama is the first President of my life who to me actually behaves in a presidential way - who is both more talented, more responsible, and more ethical than most people who excel in these qualities. A President is supposed to have, or at least try to cultivate, the best qualities of the American people, and Obama does that. He seems to see the Presidency not as a personal possession or vanity ornament, the way Republicans often do, but as a mission whose repercussions he takes seriously. He does not merely tower above every Republican after Teddy Roosevelt, but is a better American and a better human being - in fact, between he and Mitt Romney, Obama is the only American in the election.
Romney would be running to rule the Cayman Islands if he could make more money that way. This country means a lot more to Obama than to Romney, it's not hard to see that. To Romney this is all just another game because he got bored raiding corporations and firing workers here and there, and now he wants to loot the US Treasury and lay off the whole country. He's Gordon Gekko without all the compassion and decency. But Obama also just plain towers above Romney as a man and as an American.
The two men are two versions of the American Dream: The one, the true one, about striving to provide a better life for your children through education and aspiration, encompassing all the diverse peoples of this nation. And the false, corrupt one, about thieving and making yourself rich at other people's expense, then trying to buy public offices as ornaments and inroads to further business like so many flint-hearted tycoon cliches from Charles Foster Kane to C. Montgomery Burns. That is what this election is about: Reaffirming the true spirit of this country - a spirit embodied not only in the life, but in the ongoing achievements of Barack Obama.
It's about saying to Republicans that we aren't fooled by their lies - that we know they've spent the last two years doing everything they could to stop the President from rebuilding the economy, and we're not going to reward them for deliberately harming this country. And that we aren't tempted by their false version of the American Dream - the one where you have to hate and envy your neighbors, and want to make them poor so you can be rich.