If I could talk to Barack alone for 10 minutes...

In the interest of following the modern empty-headed media trend of bashing both parties and spreading the blame for the current contagion with which we are infected to politicians of all stripes, (even though loyal readers know that I certainly disagree), I am going to flog Team Obama for both their failings through the first term as well as their miserable failure in designing an effective campaign to date.   So off we go; here’s an open letter to Barack Obama and his dizzy and uncoordinated minions.

Dear Barack; Let me start by saying that your election in 2008 was a surprisingly joyous occasion for me.  I’m nearly 60, came of age in the late 60’s hoping like hell that I didn’t get drafted, cursing Nixon, and developing an uncanny ability for rolling joints with one hand while driving, not necessarily in that order.   It made me happy for several reasons; first, it meant that the previous 8 years of an incredibly frightening dimwit wandering near the red telephone with his reptilian prince regent and a cabal of ruthless greed-heads was not the start of an inexorable, flaming spiral of death, fear and madness.  You may not realize just how comforting that was.

 It meant the march of the right wing reactionaries -  begun with the election of the sweating, swarthy, jabbering paranoid Dick Nixon and blossoming with his near-sighted war criminal turned statesman, Henry Kissinger bombing Laos and Cambodia back to the 16^th century while want-to-be secret agent G. Gordon Liddy and his clumsy band of third rate second story men fucked up a simple break in at the Watergate - had been at least temporarily halted by an almost inexplicable surge of mass cooperation, collaboration and wrenching disgust at what our government had become – water-boarding liars and thieves and amoral criminals.  It felt good.

It also meant a lot to me that an intelligent man of color was elected, a truly historic event that my generation had been working towards for nearly 50 years.  It meant that the regressive cavemen like George Wallace and Strom Thurmond had lost, once and for all and finally.  It may be a cliché but in truth, we are living the great American experiment writ large – the stereotypical melting pot is still cooking and we are not nearly done with the inevitable blurring of the races just as surely as we aren’t done with the blurring of gender roles, adjusting to the global economy, and figuring out how to stop from destroying the planet.   You weren’t a rich old white man and that was incredibly refreshing.  And in truth, had you been, with the same rhetoric and policies and vision for governing, you probably wouldn’t have been elected, even running against a fossilized cold warrior like McCain and an empty-headed ditz like Palin. 

Unfortunately for you, this monumentally important event took place in the context of the disastrous culmination of years of misguided economic policy, deregulation, and selfishness and as you slid behind the wheel to an Earth, Wind and Fire soundtrack you probably knew that the brakes were about to go out and the wheels were going to fall off.   A determined conspiracy theorist, as a matter of fact, could easily suspect that the nomination of McCain and his subsequent punch-drunk selection of Palin may have been a signal that the republicans wanted no part of the last four years, knowing full well that it was a catastrophic train wreck waiting to happen and not wanting it to happen on their watch.  That particular bit of insight proved to be true; angry and frightened American started turning on you immediately, expecting you to fix things the day you took office and those not hiding under the bed with a blanket over their heads began muttering darkly in about the summer of 2009. 

But I am not here to defend you – in spite of you having my sympathy, the truth is you have fucked this up a number of ways and there’s no getting around it.

You should have recognized early on that being conciliatory with the republicans was going to get you nowhere.   They began plotting your 2012 defeat the day you were inaugurated and it was clear anything you proposed, they would oppose.   Instead you negotiated and negotiated right up until the 2010 mid-terms when they ate your lunch.  You squandered an historic opportunity by even bothering.

Your justice department has been a nightmare; ignoring the financial criminals completely, chasing pot dispensaries and letting the crew-cut jar heads run amock along the border.   There’s really been almost no difference between Holder running the department and the series of brown shirts and Wall Street collaborators running it for George the Dull.  Holder is no Alberto Gonzales but in truth he hasn’t accomplished much either and chasing illegal aliens and stoned cancer patients is no way to build a lasting legacy.   Meanwhile smirking pricks like Jamie Dimon are testifying in front of congress and pissing on your shoes. 

You promised to end the war in Iraq and you did that; congratulations.  In spite of blow-back from right wing warriors and chicken hawks who never met a war they couldn’t support, we’ve finally ended that doomed adventure in cheap revenge and dick-measuring begun by Dubbya the dumb ass and cheered on by the cadre of neo-con geniuses in the White House basement.  Good job.  Now get us the hell out of godforsaken Afghanistan.   Sure, there were political considerations to doubling down with another surge but face it; Karzai and his tribe of cronies and fixers are just a bunch of thieves and bandits and imagining for one second that we can turn this dusty, goat-ridden place into some kind of exotic resort destination and productive member of international society is a fool’s errand of the highest order and it’s long past time to tell him,  “it’s over – you guys figure it out”. 

One point made repeatedly by republicans and patriotic conservatives – not necessarily the same thing – is that you have missed a chance to root out all of the mind-boggling duplication, waste, inefficiency and just systemic chaos in government.   Have you tried to interface – as a private citizen – with any federal government bureaucracy lately?   It’s a sucking tar pit and a fundamental reason Americans are disillusioned and pissed off about their government.  It’s this monumental “thing” that only seems to restrict us and not actually assist us in accomplishing anything useful.   Under the circumstances, this is probably a second term issue but I thought I’d mention it. 

But my biggest complaint isn’t something you chose to do or not do; honorable people can disagree as to priorities and necessities.  My biggest problem is that your team messaging sucks; it’s absolutely inept.  If this is the best that Axelrod can do, he’s gotta go.   With all that you accomplished – in the face of staggering and treasonous opposition – most of the country still doesn’t know that they got a tax break, thinks of “stimulus” as a dirty obscenity, hates the idea of bailouts but are supporting the opposition, who themselves benefited from them and who – now that they don’t need you any more – are clamouring for your defeat and calling you a failure.   There is no understanding of the economic fundamentals making employment such an intractable problem, even though Robert Reich, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz have been giving free lectures on the topic for two years. 

A perfect example; you let the republicans totally control the narrative around the Keystone Pipeline flap and it ended up being characterized as you being a tree-hugging environmental wack-job instead of a story about the incredibly dirty, boondoggle and waste of time that it was / is.  Nevertheless, you hadn't cancelled it; just called for further review and planning to take care of concerns expressed by people in Oklahoma - not exactly a hot bed of Greenpeace activists.  Why wasn't someone out there telling the true story of stinking oil sands and the fact that all of that oil would be refined and exported, not used domestically?  Where were your people as you were blamed for rising gas prices by all of the republican candidates and their Faux News propagandists? 

Why isn’t  there a coherent message from your people to boost your successes as much as republicans inflate your failures or invent them for you?   And now – in the last crucial months of the campaign – you’re still not giving anyone a reason to vote for you; you’re bashing Romney and Ryan and looking petty and small and weak by doing so.  Give people a reason to give you a second term!!!  Stop worrying about Mitt’s tax returns – he asked Ann for permission, she said no, so that’s it.  You spent the entire first two years of your administration and most of your political capital passing the ACA, it was validated by the Supreme Court, now move on.  Ryan’s budget’s an easy target so fire away but what are you going to do in the next four years? 

Look, Barack; let’s be real – there is 45% of the country that is going to support you and 45% who hate you.  If you could change that whole black thing it might be less.  But you need to get the 10% in the middle and you’re not going to do that by preaching to the choir. 

Romney is an empty suit and Ryan’s a self-serving far-right reactionary – you should be able to defeat them without all this drama if the democrats could just focus on telling people how they are going to benefit – how we’re all going to benefit – by re-electing you.  But they are doing a terrible job of it so far.

Your barking pal,

JT