A brief announcement: President Obama is slated to make a big speech tomorrow (Tuesday, the 25th) about climate change.
Personally, I have been waiting for him to make a move on this particular issue for quite some time. Can't say that my expectations are grand, or anything. But I am interested in what he will aim to do with this very important issue, and let's hope that it is one of the true success stories for this administration.
Many of his most extreme detractors feel that he can do nothing right, and many of his biggest supporters feel he can do nothing wrong.
Me, I think that he is way too political, and so bogged down in the political game and gimmickry, that he can hardly transcend that to fulfill the great hope that many had for his term. He is just an ambitious and self-serving politician. Nothing more, and nothing less.
He reminds me, frankly, of both Clinton and Bush. One interesting thing that I heard once about President Clinton, which I think applies now to President Obama, is that he did not come to office with an ideological approach, with a definitive agenda to sway the political thinking or action in this country, but rather tends to carefully trod across a stream upon stones. One battle at a time. Many expected him to have this great vision of what his American would look like, and many still unconditionally support him, no matter what. These people, I believe, were probably so scarred and sick from the Bush years, that they are clinging to Obama for fear of what the next Republican presidency (and you know it's coming eventually, inevitably, and probably sooner rather than later).
But is not our job to scrutinize our leaders, these politicians that are supposed to be our public servants? Why is it that they are assigned the status of virtual divinities or demons? Why is it that, depending on your viewpoint, they can either do no right, or no wrong?
I did not like George W. Bush. That's putting it mildly. I felt at the time that he was the worst President that this country has ever had. Has the four and a half years since changed my feelings on this?
Not even close. Yes, Bush was that bad! The fact that many neocons just happen to be waking up and noticing that many things are worse now than they were before (And hey, look! According to them, they just happened to notice when Obama was in office, although things were horrendous during the Bush years, and they are only now noticing many of the very things that Bush was guilty of, if not far more guilty of, than Obama).
In any case, I do not glamorize President Obama, simply because he is not George W. Bush. If you do that, you can find all sorts of excuses for the inexcusable. He is better than Bush, or at least, he is not as bad as Bush was. But he is still the President that initially kept the Bush tax cuts that especially helped the wealthy out, at a time when the United States was engaged in multiple wars that Bush started. Obama is and forever will be the President that gave the President the right to eliminate the constitutional right of habeas corpus, if he (or eventually she) sees fi, by signing the NDAA into law. He also passed the Monsanto Protection Act. In short, he has been a disappointment.
One area that I found him especially disappointing in was the environment. I mean, this is the first definitive major statement and policy move that he has made (and which he promised as a candidate), and it is coming in his second term in office! What if he had lost? The environment was such a low item on the totem pole of his priorities, that it could wait and wait and wait, evidently.
Better late than never, I guess. Hopefully, he will make up for lost time with substance. We shall see....
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