The Day Has Dawned

For months, I’ve written about my concerns with the character of the GOP presidential  candidate.  I don’t have to recount the many jaw-droppers he’s  come out with over his run for the GOP nod & his actual candidacy.  They are legion & legendary.

Today, I am going to write about his opponent.  Many of my friends feel even more strongly about him, that he will lead our great nation down a too-horrible-to-contemplate path to perhaps even spiritual Armageddon.

I don’t see that. 

When I look at President Obama, I see someone who kept his #1 campaign promise, to pass comprehensive health care reform, knowing that it would be as much a torpedo to his chances for reelection as passing the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was to LBJ’s.  He did it anyway. 

I see someone who said that he would go wherever he had to – even into the sovereign territory of a supposed ally - to get Osama Bin Laden, a position pummeled by both Hillary Rodham Clinton & Mitt Romney.  He did it anyway. 

I see someone who promised to do away with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, knowing it would alienate in the strongest possible way the Evangelical Right.  He did it anyway. 

I see someone who believes that a woman has the right to make decisions about her own body, someone who sees that our nation’s prosperity is intrinsically tied – like it or not – to our ability to effectively plan the size of our families. 

I see someone whose first bill signing was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps ensure  victims of wage discrimination - for whatever cause - readier access to remedy the inequality.

I see someone pilloried by gun owners for taking away their rights, which he’s made no move to do in spite of how many deadly shooting, including the attempted assassination of the amazing Gabby Giffords. 

I see someone who inherited an ENORMOUS debt incurred by a Republican President-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (whose tax cuts, along with unfunded wars & Medicare Part D, gutted the surplus left to him). 

I see someone who inherited the greatest financial crisis since the Depression & who kept disaster from becoming utter calamity.  

I see someone who put the auto manufacturers - our nation's most gloried private industry - through the most effective parts of a bankruptcy without the downside of wiping out their genuinely small business suppliers, many of whom would have been ruined if they had been paid pennies on the dollars they were owed (as would have happened in an actual bankruptcy).

I see someone who has taken China to court over unfair trade practices,  And won.

Whew - that’s a lot of stuff.  And it’s just the tip of the iceberg. 

Okay, so what did President Obama do that riles me, that makes me question his leadership?  Turns out they're things the GOP should be applauding, not condemning.  GITMO - still open.  Deportations went up, not down.  Drone attacks were authorized against enemy combatants.  Americans - ones who plotted against our nation - were killed instead of captured them & returned to the USA for trial.  Surveillance on our nation’s citizens, abroad & at home, hasn't been rolled back. These are things Republicans would ballyhoo if one of their own had done it.

There are many who say that President Obama is the most divisive president in history.  I can think of one who was infinitely more so – Abraham  Lincoln.  And, like President Obama, the root of his divisive nature lay not in himself, but in the hearts & minds of the people who reviled what he stood for & against.  If Barack Obama is as toxic as so many claim, I have not been able to find the toxin in him.

Today, we have two candidates before us. 

One did a lot of what he campaigned to do, including taking out Osama Bin Laden.  And the things that he hasn’t done are things that Republicans would support if he had an R after his name instead of a D. 

The other candidate was nominated by a party whose leaders got together on the very night of President Obama’s inauguration, pledging to make his life a living hell, to fight him at every turn, to make it impossible for him to achieve so much as a smidgen of true bipartisan support, whose self-proclaimed #1 goal was to make him a 1-term president  –  then they & their supporters turn around & paint the president as divisive & partisan.   (Strange but true - it worked AND no one seems to fault them for putting their party's interests ahead of country's.)

I have already written volumes - mostly on Facebook - about my concern with Mitt Romney.  Time & time & time again, he’s said jaw-droppers that only make sense within the context of narcissism.  But, to be fair, a President Romney would give Republicans what Grover Norquist said many months ago was all they seek – someone with enough working digits to sign into law laws originated in the GOP-dominated House, someone who acts as a facilitator of their wishes rather than a leader (his words, not mine).

It is true that  IF Gov. Romney is elected today, we'll see a far different relationship between president & Congress.  That's because Democrats value compromise over stark ideology, compared to Republicans who – for the last generation – believe it is more important to stand on principle than to effectively govern.

Whatever the outcome, I hope everyone holds close to their hearts that we are, as a nation, a tough old bird.  But above all, we are a nation who believes “in God we trust.” 

If your candidate wins, my heartiest congratulations.  If he loses, my condolences.  But whichever, always & forever remember the words which are the most frequently voiced commandment in the Old & New Testaments – FEAR NOT.  Take no thought for the morrow, putting your trust ~ your full, real trust, not just words ~ in God.  Because if we can’t do that, all the rest is pretty inconsequential, don’t you think?