"He'll win," my father stated in the most resigned, frustrated way available. When I tried to argue, he looked at me with half-disgust and practically sighed, "trust me: he'll win."
If you didn't know my Dad and his Conservative, Republicanesque ideology, you would read his words as a prediction that a Tea Party-loving, Biblebelt-touring, Liberal-despising candidate would soar to victory on Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Yet, Dad wasn't talking about his candidate of choice.
He was referring to his president.
It is just another subject, added to the pile of disagreements, which has grown taller than Sears Tower. (We'd open an observation deck, but can't seem to agree on the hours of operation.) Yet, this disagreement is unusual in a sense. Dad cries that President Obama is made of Teflon and won't lose his job. I mourn that the President is so controversial and disliked that he will not get a second term. Neither of us wants to be correct.
Yes, folks, the 2012 presidential election is coming faster than a virgin male at a Hooters' wet t-shirt contest. Unlike the case of the virgin, however, the end result will not come quickly. With just over thirteen months until the election, let me be the first to tell you: the weeks of verbal assaults will be long, the campaign ads will be many, the debates will be patronizing and none of it will be pretty. By the time we finally select our candidates on that first Tuesday in November, we'll be absolutely worn out--much more than we already are.
I go on record today in this blog, predicting what I believe to be true: Barack Obama will not be re-elected to the presidency. It is not what I want, and it is not what I think is best for our country, but I am realistic enough to sit back, look at the tide objectively to see that the President is about to be yanked from safe shores and cast out to sea.
Americans are looking for someone, something to blame for the way things are these days. We have always failed at accepting our national responsibility for messes and disasters (see Laws, Jim Crow or Affairs, Middle-Eastern Post-1948.) We don't want to accept the fact that President Obama is not to blame for the economic crisis that arrived at his new desk on January 20, 2009. And while we all hold him and his government to the expectation that things need to turn around, we are a society of instant-gratification which believes that three and a half years is more than enough time to tackle multiple-decades of financial misconduct, thank you very much. So what if he doesn't get along with Congress? So what if the majority in Congress is saying "No" to all of his policies and efforts, just for funzies? He's the President--he should FIX THIS.
So, we'll throw him out. We'll equate Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter, a man with noble, far-reaching plans who ultimately took on too much, alienated everyone and lost his ass on a plate in 1980 to a former actor from California. And just like we did then, we'll listen for a voice belonging to someone who gets stars in his eyes talking about patriotism and the 'American Dream'. We'll look for a man who may not have the sharpest policy-making intellect, but he's funny, down-home and appealing in a masculine way. We'll search for a "man's man"--someone that a regular guy such as, oh, I don't know, "Joe Plumber" could grab a beer with. And that's who we'll put in charge.
Well, I'm sorry, but one Texas Governor was enough for me.
The American confidence in its government is the lowest that it has ever been. Still, before you decide that President Obama is to blame for your lot in life, please consider the following: we traded Jimmy Carter for Ronald Reagan, a man who tripled the national debt and ignored society's less fortunate. We got tired of the blue-dress floozie and scandals of the Clinton-era and elected a man who pissed off our allies, protected the wealthy from paying higher taxes and continued to increase spending abroad while ignoring dire domestic problems. In other words: is the grass really greener? Are these Congressional Tea Partiers, the ones who got their fame by saying "No", offering anything better than what the current Administration is proposing? Do you really think that the party who ridicules multi-bizillionaire Warren Buffett's call to increase taxes for the wealthiest people in our country is going to be the party that leads us out of a recession?!
As much as I tend to think optimistically, my forecast of the President's loss at the polls is a must for me: it'll be an easier blow to take when it actually happens. The GOP has a large field of recognizable folks these days, ranging from Sarah "Barracuda" Palin to Newt "Not A Reptile, I Swear" Gingrich. These two and other candidates who tend to suffer from Footinmouth Disease (see also Bachmann, Michelle) will find themselves waiting for the President in that same lonely sea. Yet, sooner or later, a frontrunner will emerge. He'll exude confidence, tell us that government is to blame for everything that we've attempted and failed. We'll buy it, we'll drink the Kool-Aid and that expected, cynically-driven cycle will start all over again. More than the troubled economy, more than any argument over the national debt and more than partisan politics: our own lack of patience will be our undoing and will headline President Obama's defeat. While I'll stop short of professing that I've always trusted the President's political integrity, I'll shout from the rooftops that I think he's trying to do a good job and is deserving of the confidence that he is trying to inspire in my country. Unfortunately, the American public won't agree with me. They usually don't, anyway.
Dad, I don't find myself saying this often, but I hope I'm dead wrong--and that you are totally right.
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