When You Are Up to Your Ass in Alligators It Is Hard to Remember Your Job Is to Drain the Swamp

This is the way I feel about the Obama administration, particularly the second term. Even though when Obama speaks he seems to remain cool, clear-focused and calm, one wonders.

After all he is the fella who the opposition said we have one priority – to get him out of office. They weren’t just against his policies or ideology; their stated purpose was to oust him, period. That is not exactly a climate for compromise and bipartisan work to get things done for the country. And yet, Obama seems to want to try and work together with folk who just don’t want to work with him.

At times he seems to say, if that’s the way it is, let’s just work around congress and see if we can apply enough outside pressure to get something done. But what happens instead is 37 efforts to eradicate his health care program; tenacious but dumb.

Now we have a whole series of charges about his administration even to talk about impeachment. Since congress seems incapable of actually doing anything it seems to put all its efforts into distractions to keep folk from seeing big problems.

Quite frankly I don’t even know what Obama’s goals are for his second term when he should be less distracted but then he still has to deal with an intractable congress. It is hard to provide leadership to folk who don’t want to be led or even see common concerns. It is like herding cats.

I hope Obama can get his and others focus on job creation, rebuilding the middle class, shrinking the difference between the haves and the have nots, but maybe it just cannot be done in a republic that has ceased to be a republic and has turned into a plutocracy. I’s like to seem him more forcefully focus on a reformed program and push traditional liberal (meaning ideas of liberty and equality) agendas.

I still think it all turns on campaign reform. Until we change the election process dominated by the wealthy perhaps we just cannot move forward. I plan on doing amore comprehensive article soon based on the ideas of Lawrence Lessig and his book One Way Forward which has some excellent grassroots, bipartisan, sensible means of moving our country forward.