CALM DOWN, AMERICA!
by Joyce Marcel
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.
April 30, 2009
Printable version of this story
DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- The way I heard the story, a chicken is eating lunch when an acorn falls on her head. Deciding that the sky is falling - she's a chicken, see, so she's not very bright - she runs around telling everyone, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" Her friends join her to spread the word, and soon everyone is pretty much wiped out by a wily fox who sees this mass hysteria as a dining option. (Insert Dick Cheney joke here.)
Now, when Mr. Cheney and President George W. Bush were running the country, the sky pretty much was falling all the time. Secret prisons! Torture! Hedge funds! Rapacious greed! Crashing economy! Destruction of the middle class! Religion corrupting science! For-profit prisons! For-profit armies! War! More war! Even more war! Yippee!!
But Messrs. Bush and Cheney left. (Yes, I know Vice President Cheney won't go quietly back to his cage, but sooner or later he'll accidentally look in a mirror and break into a million shards.)
Now we have President Barack Obama. When he won, the fine comic writers at The Onion ran this headline: "Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job."
Yesterday, Mr. Obama completed his first 100 days in office, and it's national hysteria out there. Has he saved the country yet? Is he bringing us to the brink of socialism? Is he bankrupting the government? Has he weakened our standing abroad? Has he walked on water? Is he the cause of swine flu? Is he the cure?
The right is going crazy wearing tea bags and making wild-eyed accusations that Obama is "anti-American," that he's endangering the safety of the nation, that he's out to destroy Christianity, and that shaking Hugo Chavez'es hand threatens the sanctity of private property. It's enough to make your head bleed.
And the Left is going crazy because Obama hasn't saved the environment yet. And because we still don't have a national health service. "Democrats are caving," raves MoveOn.org about some Congresional fiddling with President Obama's clean energy jobs plan. "We're losing," they scream. Others have written him off as being too conventional, too beholden to special interests, too wedded to his idea of his "team of rivals" to notice that these guys and gals only play on one team and that's their own.
Take a deep breath, America. Give the guy a chance. One hundred days is barely enough time to unpack.
Mr. Obama's been a whirlwind of activity since he took office. He's visited 12 states already. Look! He's in Mexico. Look! He's in Europe! Look, he's where? Iraq?
Many of us have had our hearts in our mouths for 100 days, wondering when some racist cretin is going to try and blow him up. It wasn't much more than 1,000 days before President Kennedy was shot in office, and nut jobs came after Ford and Reagan, too. It's just possible that by making it through two terms in office, President Obama will have achieved enough in this white hot political climate.
Mr. Obama has done some smart things. He's ordered Guantánamo shut. He's released the torture memos. He's put some welcome and needed dollars into the pockets of the middle class. He's devoting himself to the idea of open government. He's trying desperately to shore up our sinking financial system - and it will take years before we know how that's going to turn out. He's made some good appointments. Some roads and bridges are already being repaired.
He's also made some serious missteps. He's spoken against gay marriage. He's snuggled up to, and then backed away from, the idea of a truth commission to investigate Bush and Cheney's criminal acts.
The new President's most serious mistakes? Prolonging the occupation of Iraq and committing us to another quagmire in Afghanistan - "the graveyard of empires." He's going to wind up like LBJ - doing great on the home front while going down in flames on the battlefields of Vietnam.
President George W. Bush had an approval rating of 62 to 22 percent disapproval in April of 2001. Obama? It's 68 to 22 percent right now. What can that mean, besides not much?
Set aside the hysteria on both sides of the spectrum and you see a guy who's had an incredible number of problems thrust at him. He's made far more right decisions than wrong ones. His self-confidence can be jarring - His "I'm being continually updated on the situation" doesn't mean much if you're dying of swine flu.
But at the same time, he doesn't take himself too seriously. He's gone to great lengths to get out of the White House and be around regular people. He looks like he's enjoying this whole President thing, and his family seems to be enjoying it, too.
So calm down, America. It may be dark out there but the sky isn't falling. Stop counting days and expecting miracles. Relax and let Obama do his job. And remember, it could be a whole lot worse - you could have had Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin in there.
Besides, anyone who invites Stevie Wonder to the White House is doing just fine by me.
Joyce Marcel is a freelance journalist. She can be reached at joycemarcel@yahoo.com.
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