A Nation of Hand-Wringers
Now that the elections have been fought and won by a once improbable candidate, Americans have quickly reverted to type – worrying about everything and nothing on how the new president will govern. It never ceases to amaze me how much influence a negative culture has on a nations psyche. Here is a candidate who just went through the most gruelling political campaign in U.S. history by some accounts and came out victorious. He took on some of the most established political powers in the history of the United States and won. He managed to raise more money than any candidate for political office ever and created a once-in-a-lifetime political movement that saw a resurgence in participatory democracy that has been lacking for decades. When the going got tough and there were pressures for him to jump into the sewers with his opponents and rehash the same old tired politics of division and personal destruction, he flatly refused and decided to trust the American people to do the right thing and we did. In one single night, his victory as the next president of the United States of America virtually erased almost eight maddening years of hatred and acrimony directed at the U.S. by the rest of the world and engendered by the irresponsible government of president George W. Bush. Anyone listening to hand-wringers about the choices President-Elect Obama has made and is making would think that the world was coming to an end. In some odd way, it seems like most people still do not trust him to do what is right and prudent. That the media would seek the negative news is not surprising, that is after all, how they make their living. But to hear millions of people who volunteered for Obama and avidly followed his every move on the campaign trail express doubt about his intent and even quesion his judgement in terms of his appointees is baffling to say the least. All of a sudden, there is the screaming about too much Clinton in his prospective cabinet picks, but for some odd reason, these same people seem to forget that the same “Clinton People” helped run his campaign. The fact that these former Clinton supporters decided to go with a candidate who was a long shot at the beginning showed that they were not beholden to the Clintons. Then there is the snide remarks by some frustrated journalists that this is not the change we need as if the proposition of change presupposes that you must by default bring in inexperienced people. What these hand-wringers have not done so far is offer alternatives. If you do not think a particular candidate is good enough for change, what is your recommendation. When as an example, Anderson Cooper of CNN glibly asks “Is this the change we need?”, one is almost tempted to ask him if he expects to be appointed to a cabinet post with his shallow, sensationalist brand of “journalism”. The one solace in this depressing environment is that just as he has done all along, President Barack Obama will once again outsmart his detractors and doubters and leave the naysayers asking at the end of it all, “what happened?”