What is it You Were Looking For?

Everyone seems to be down on Obama these days. From the Gulf oil spill or “Obama’s Katrina” to the impending great Democrat vote out scheduled for this November, it’s become fashionable to be down on Barrack.

A commenter on the Radical Middle made a statement that as much as I hate to; I have to agree with. This commenter stated that Obama has “become too liberal for the moderates and too moderate for the liberals.” So true except for one little word: “become”. I think he has always been that way; but the American public has awoken. So far, with the exception of transportation and infrastructure, he has stayed pretty true to his word. He talked about beginning to focus on Afghanistan, and has done that by drawing down forces in Iraq and beginning to re-deploy those forces to Afghanistan. He talked about reversing “Don’t ask Don’t Tell” and is well on the way to doing that. Last but certainly not least, he talked about healthcare reform, and, well; we all know what happened in March.

All this was done while the economy was in the middle of taking a big stinky dump and a massive environmental disaster that will make the Exxon Valdez look about as bad as a turd floating in the kiddie pool.

So I think in-action is not the problem. He hasn’t exactly strayed from what he said he was going to and wanted to do. The problem is people didn’t want Obama, or any democratic President for that matter. They just didn’t want George Bush, and were too gun shy to vote for another Republican candidate. They voted for him because he wasn’t another G Dubs.

Here’s the problem: They didn’t pay attention to what he said, or what McCain said, or what Palin said (ok, no one did that because they were too busy laughing). Obama didn’t pull the wool over anyone’s eyes.

A friend of mine stated the other day “I voted for Obama, but I’ll tell you this; I did NOT vote for him to change healthcare”. Guess what, he didn’t hide the fact during his campaign!!!! Maybe you shouldn’t have called his bluff! Maybe you should have evaluated your decision a little better. If that was such a hot button issue for you, then perhaps you should have reconsidered.

My point to all this is; if you really supported a lot of the issues Obama addressed during his campaign (which I do for the record), then I don’t see a reason to be all that upset with him thus far. If you are one of the above people, then tough shit. He was pretty clear on what he wanted to do as President. If you don’t like the idea now, then you probably didn’t like it then. You just weren’t paying attention.