Politicians love nostalgia, particularly the conservative ones.  They like to convince their base that things are changing too fast and would be better if they were just like they used to be.  The entire notion of conservatism is not founded on nostalgia, but on preserving traditions and the status quo.  Of course no rational minded conservative would preserve things that are violations of human rights even if they used to be practiced.  The irrational ones do, but they are the ones besides themselves with nostalgia.  And politicians, who are smarter and know better, understand that getting the votes of those people requires an emotional plea recalling a “better time” when things weren’t so different like they are today.  Of course liberals do it too.

The governor of Virginia recently let loose a bit of nostalgia that’s landed him in hot water.  The favorite nostalgic game many Americans like to play is that of the Confederacy during the Civil War.  Those who like to be nostalgic claim the war wasn’t about slavery but state’s rights…to have slaves that is.  There was no single bigger issue than slavery at the time of the Civil War and even at the time of the Revolution slavery was an issue.  We simply delayed the argument for nearly a hundred years is all.  The Confederacy is looked back upon as a romantic fight for what they believed in.  Sure it was misguided, but they were defending their home from a more powerful aggressor and we Americans sure do love the notion of such a fight.  So are the Muslim terrorists we’re fighting today, and yet I doubt many of those who look back with nostalgia on the Confederacy would afford Al Qaeda the same kind view.  Maybe in another hundred years or so?  I won’t hold my breath.

But this is where nostalgia gets us into trouble.  The South in particular has been very good at remembering the past the way they’d like to.  Pleasant plantation life, fine warriors like Robert E. Lee, and a host of other things that have some basis in truth but lack the complete picture.  Lee was brilliant, but also foolish.  He took risks that no commander should’ve and he finally paid for them at Gettysberg and in ma.  And yet if you were to tell that to a Southern Nostalgist (no, it’s not a word but it should be) they’d argue all day how wrong that assessment of Lee is.  It is however historically accurate.  The Confederacy gets very good treatment by historians and those in the South despite the simple fact that they were fighting to deny human beings their rights.  That’s the simple truth of it, but of course they claim the truth isn’t so simple.  And yet on other things, such as fighting Muslims terrorists, it is that simple.  That’s the first rule of nostalgia.  The simple rules that apply to others don’t apply to their own nostalgic version of history.

As for the world getting worse, I frankly don’t see it.  In fact, I think the world is getting better.  I know many of us like to think that the 1950’s were great times for America, but ask black people about how great those times were and you’ll get a different story.  Today we are living closer to the high ideals laid out in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.  We are still not there, but closer than we were when we allowed slavery to exist, or giant corporations to form trusts that could abuse the market and the government and in turn the people.  Women didn’t used to be able to vote.  They could be beaten with a switch no thicker than a man’s thumb (hence the origin of the phrase ‘rule of thumb’).  We used to allow children to work twelve hours a day or more and pay them next to nothing for it.  We used to have no safety net for the poor, elderly, or unfortunate.  And we used to have standards of living that were much lower.  We didn’t understand diseases the way we do now nor have the medicines and medical procedures to cure them.  We didn’t understand our universe the way we do now and as a result we’ve seen great advancements in both our technology and our humanity.  We still have a long way to go of course, but I just don’t see how things are getting worse.

Immigration works like a flowing fluid.  When you have air in a balloon, it’s at a higher pressure than the air outside the balloon.  Let the end go and the air rushes out to fill the massive void in the room.  This is referred to as a pressure gradient.  There is an economic gradient that drives immigration, both legal and illegal, in the United States.  It’s not as simple as we have jobs and they want jobs, that’s just what’s visible on the surface.  The real issue is why are there jobs that illegal immigrants are sought after for.  This is the heart of the issue as it seems as Americans we have reached a point where we are refusing to do certain jobs.  I can’t say if it’s declining work ethic or being sold on an American dream that is all gains and no hard work, but somehow we’ve lost our willingness to do these jobs.  I know some will shout back at me that we haven’t.  But that’s frankly wrong.  If we were lining up to pick lettuce in Arizona, then there would be no illegal immigrants filling those tasks.  If we were so eager to clean houses, then why is there room in the labor market for illegal immigrants in that industry as well?

The answer isn’t a lack of work ethics a lone.  I’ve seen plenty of hard working people out there.  The other part of the answer is our culture.  We have a nasty habit of praising certain job types and looking down on others.  When someone tells you they clean houses for a living, you know it’s hard to hold back the judgment.  In fact, it’s hard not to pity people who do what many of us consider ‘menial’ jobs.  Career snobbery is part of the problem.  No one ever judges someone for being a lawyer or a vice-president of a failing bank or a doctor.  Of course the irony being that none of those professionals could function without someone to take out their garbage, clean their offices, watch their children, or pick the crops that become their food.  Without someone doing those ‘menial’ jobs, society would cease to function.  And yet we tend to think that such jobs aren’t necessary or are less important.  That’s wrong, they are vital.  More so than a lawyer.  Who cares about the law if you spend all your day growing food to last you the year?

The other part of this problem is in two parts.  One is the American Dream, and the other is the undervaluing of labor.  Our government and our corporate plutocracy is hard at work selling us on the American Dream.  Everyone should own their own home, right?  Look how well that one worked out for us.  We think America is a house in the suburbs with two kids and a dog, two cars in the garage, and never having to say no to the things we want.  Within reason of course.  We subscribe to the more is better policy, like most humans do, and our society embraces that natural instinct to horde.  Wal-Mart’s slogan is “save money, live better.”  In other words, buy a bunch of cheap crap and you’ll have a better life.  That cheap crap of course is made overseas because even labor in Mexico is too expensive for them.  How ironic is it that Wal-Mart passes itself off quite successfully as an American institution with nearly 90% of it’s products are made in China?  What’s even better is that so many of the ignorant citizens of this country actually buy into it.  And so we push a lifestyle that involves a too big house to hold our too much stuff so we can pretend to be happy.  And we all know you don’t get the too big house and too much stuff picking lettuce in Arizona.  Why?  Because the owners of those fields would rather undercut their competition anyway possible so they do it by cutting their biggest expense which is of course labor.  And in order to do that, they cut wages to the point that most Americans refuse to take the job given they can do slightly better at McDonald’s, though we have plenty of snobbery when it comes to working in fast food too.  This underpriced wage makes it that much easier for illegals to fill the void.  It’s simple economics.  If you have a job that needs doing and you offer five bucks an hour and no one applies, you aren’t paying enough.  Food tends to be a high demand item.  Not being able to sell it, especially since almost all our food comes from large industrial farms that have plenty of means to move their product, is rare.  What that means is you can offer 7 bucks an hour and raise your price of the lettuces, which would be much less than two dollars a head, and fill the job.  Assuming seven dollars is a high enough wage.  Remember, your potential American employees are looking for that too big house with too much stuff from Wal-Mart to fill it.  They might not take anything less than ten dollars an hour.  And we wonder why illegal immigrants flood the nation in spite of stricter laws designed to keep them out?

So how do we fix it?  First, we stop with the right wing, conservative clinging to an idea that doesn’t work.  They simply don’t want to address the real problem because doing so would hurt their donors, the business community.  So they attack the people who have no political clout, the illegal immigrants.  We have to realize that this is our problem too, not just theirs.  We have to start accepting that unadulterated consumerism isn’t equal to freedom and liberty.  It’s the opposite.  That’s how slaves are made.  We need to start accepting that our lettuce and other goods and services in industries that are hiring cheap illegal labor are going to get more expensive if we hire Americans to do the same work.  There’s no getting around it.  The labor market demands a certain wage and that is what it is.  We will have to live with a medium sized house that is properly furnished and outfitted.  I know, not very American of me.  We need to be willing to look at the issues actual root causes, not the ones that we see on bumper stickers or the ramblings of the likes of Tom Tancredo of Colorado.  We have to be willing to address our own faults that contribute to the problem instead of trying to blame it completely on the immigrants themselves.  Finally, we need to remove race and talk of culture from the issue.  Immigration isn’t about either.  It’s about economics.  If the culture and race aspects distract us, they will take over until we find ourselves divided over which group said what instead of unified in stopping the economic gradient that creates the influx of immigrants.

I know what liberals are thinking.  They’re thinking we had eight years (but it was really only six) of Republican rule in Congress and the White House.  They forced their stuff on us, tax cuts, wars, Patriot Acts, and now it’s our turn.  While that may sound fair, it’s far from mature.  And the reality is, liberals voted for some of those things that were allegedly all Republican ideas.  Apparently both sides enjoy shoving things down throats, which raises a number of awkward questions that are beyond the scope of this discussion.   As liberals, we like to think that we are the champions of the environment but that’s a bit of a myth.  There are many conservatives who do quite a bit for the environment.  Some, such as Teddy Roosevelt, have been thrown out of the conservative camp as a result of it by talking heads like Hannity and others, but the reality is conservatives have their fair share of environmentalists.  Even George W. Bush, Mr. Oil himself, has many green technologies at his Crawford Ranch.  The house has solar panels, geothermal pumps, and the recycling of water from the house to use for irrigating the landscaping around the home.  How many of us liberals have homes like that?  Not that many.   You could argue we don’t have his money, but if the cause is so important to us wouldn’t we find the resources to do what we could?  My point simply is that those of us on the left aren’t the only ones worried about and taking action to help the environment.

As for compromise, Obama has a history of it.  He did it back in the Illinois state legislature and was praised for it by republicans there.  Anyone voting for the man with the expectation that he would be a crushing conqueror of right wing policy simply didn’t know enough about whom they were voting for.  The health care bill is a prime example of a compromise.  You know how I know?  Because no one’s happy with it.  Those on the right didn’t get what they wanted in reform and those on the left didn’t either.  They each got pieces of it, but not all they wanted.  And so they will whine about that, but the truth is, that’s compromise.  And this proposal is reeking of compromise as well, both on energy policy but also as a bit of a peace offering over health care.  Liberals may question angrily why Obama would do this, but we must remember that not every American is a liberal and liberals alone didn’t vote Obama into office.  He cannot cater his policy specifically to us and get re-elected.  The alternative to Obama in 2012 isn’t promising for liberals anyway.  The president is an office that was supposed to be above the partisan bickering by design.  We’ve since altered that design under the guise of democracy, but the truth is Obama is playing the executive role that all good presidents realize they must do.  They must compromise.  There is no such thing as a mandate that lets them steamroll their agenda over opposition.

The 2010 elections are racing towards us and the Democrats are worried.  But the truth is, the Republicans aren’t really on solid footing either.  Their reputation still hasn’t recovered from 2006 and while Karl Rove is predicting victory, he also predicted victory in 2006.  The Republican strategy is to oppose him at every turn and force his agenda to crash and burn.  Well they lost on health care, they lost on the jobs bill, and to make matters worse, Obama is now stealing their thunder on energy independence.  He’s not the stubborn ideologue they were hoping.  You can’t blame Republicans for assuming he was, after all so many of them are these days.  Obama’s compromise may anger some of us on the left, but it’s necessary to keep the right from forcing their agenda…uh…down our throats?

September 2008 looked to be the start of an economic fall that could have lead to a second Great Depression. During that time stocks plummeted, major financial institutions crumbled and the country was on the brink of economic disaster. The Bush administration in close consultation with Obama and McCain came up with TARP, Troubled Asset Relief Program designed to buy up toxic assets that were threatening to bring down our economy.

Once Obama won the election he immediately put together an economic team to manage the TARP program making sure to maximize the tax payers investment ensuring that “too big to fail” institutions were strengthened. The program was met with a populace outrage and became very unpopular as these institutions paid out billions in bonuses to the very employees who helped create the economic crisis. The bonuses were in bad taste but amounted to a fraction of the overall picture. TARP may not have been popular but most economists agree that it helped stave off another depression.

Once Obama was President he went to work and passed the biggest economic recovery package in our history without a single GOP vote. This package gave 95% of Americans a tax cut, extended unemployment benefits, patched up state budgets and invested in domestic initiatives all in attempt to soften the impact of the recession. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has determined that it has created or saved nearly 2 million jobs in 2009 with half the money yet spent. The stimulus is still infusing billions into our economy and is designed to help fuel growth as the private sector recovers from the recession.

We still have a long way to go until our economy fully recovers but it is clear we heading in the right direction. 5.6% GDP growth and now the strongest job numbers in 3 years are good indicators that our economy is strengthening. Hopefully we can string together several months of job growth and bring down the unemployment rates. The new jobs will bring additional revenue to the federal government and go a long way towards helping bring our deficits under control.

All these policies were enacted by Democrats without any GOP support. The GOP decided to play politics, betting against the American people and against a recovery in the hopes of using the bad economic situation to win seats in the November mid term races. It appears that this strategy will backfire as the the economy is growing, creating jobs and get stronger each day. Combine that with their obstruction over the health reform bill and it’s clear that the GOP does not have much to run on. They peaked in popularity last summer and miscalculated that that momentum could be sustained through the mid term elections. They felt emboldened by the polls and dug themselves in ideologically, painting themselves into a political corner with no escape.

Could the Dems have found a Neo Con ally with a strong voice to help sell the bill that was passed? As the provisions roll out and people reap the benefits of the bill while seeing the lies the GOP has been parroting for months as false the bill will certainly gain in popularity.

Ryan claims that the infamous “doc fix” should be addressed in this bill and added to the total cost of the bill. The “doc fix” is an issue that predates this bill and has nothing to do with the reform that was passed. This is an obvious attempt to conflate two separate issues and trick the American people into thinking the two are one in the same simply because the word “doctor” is referenced.  The doc fix originally came out of negotiations with the American Medical Association. The maneuver would “fix” payments to doctors at a single level or increase them over 10 years.  In 1997, a law was passed that mandated the payments Medicare makes to doctors be cut every year. The doc fix did not pass the Senate in 2009, though it has been suggested that the Democratic Party made a deal with the AMA that the doc fix would eventually be passed; in exchange, the AMA supposedly threw its support behind the health care reform bill. The doc fix has been estimated to cost several trillion dollars over 10 years.

How can Ryan say that a $208 billion dollar problem, years in the making should be added to the costs of a completely separate and new initiative to reform insurance and expand coverage? If the bill never passed then the $208 billion would still need to be addressed so that cost is a constant that can’t be added into a new bill that does not address the issue. If you took the “doc fix” out of the equation like it should be then the program still lowers the deficit using his own numbers but less than the Democrats claim. The whole deficit argument hinges on tricking people into thinking the “doc fix” has anything to do with this bill.

Ryan claims that if you included the “doc fix” along with other accounting discrepancies in the bill that the real 10 year deficit of the bill would be $59 billion or $5.9 billion per year for the next ten years.  (As if $59b to expand coverage to 95% of Americans wouldn’t be worth it anyway) Since the “doc fix” is estimated to cost $208 billion over 10 years yet Ryan claims if it were included in the bill that it would result in a $59 billion deficit over the same 10 year span it is easy to see that the bill does indeed cut the deficit evidenced by it mitigating the $208 billion dollar costs.

Lets for arguments sake concede that it should be part of the new bill and the costs should be folded in and that all of Ryan’s other objections to the accounting are correct. Ryan inadvertently proves with his own numbers that the reform bill does indeed lower our deficits. Let’s examine addressing the “doc fix” with and without the health care bill. Either way it costs the same $208 billion but because of the other deficit reducing factors of the reform bill the overall deficit per year is smaller.

Included with health care reform:

10 year deficit: $59 billion
yearly deficit: $5.9 billion

Without health care reform just fixing “doc fix”:

10 year deficit: $208 billion
yearly deficit: $20.8

This little kindergarten math proves several things:

1. The “doc fix” is an issue either way
2. The reform bill does bring down the deficit offsetting the cost of the “doc fix”
3. Ryan and the GOP are full of crap

As you can see the “doc fix” issue needs to be addressed either way but the deficit reducing properties of the health care reform bill(using Ryan’s numbers) actually helps to pay for that preexisting condition lowering the yearly deficit but close to $15 billion a year!

It’s clear that the GOP and Ryan are politically motivated to attack and discredit this historic reform at all costs. Many of their supporters have bought this political trickery hook, line and sinker.  It’s a shame that so many are fooled by such a transparent political gimmick but my above critique easily exposed it for the nonsense that it is. I also find it beyond funny that the GOP just had the reins of power and passed every single major initiative without even the attempt to pay for it. A trillion dollar entitlement program, 2 tax cuts and 2 wars all on the credit card all supported in lockstep by the GOP. Now they want to take a bill that is paid for and parse it to death trying to distort its costs. How anyone can take these guys seriously amidst their record and obvious political motivations is beyond me.

In conclusion, the bill is now law and while not perfect it does move us in the right direction. The “doc fix” issue will be addressed either way but the passage of the deficit reducing insurance reform bill has gone a long way towards paying that problem while expanding coverage to nearly 31 million Americans. It banned insurance companies from dropping coverage and excluding people with preexisting conditions all while lowering our deficits. It’s an historic bill and monumental achievement for President Obama and the Democrats and the GOP can go into the 2010 midterm elections as the bitter do nothing party to their own peril.

The GOP has enjoyed political momentum and poll numbers for months but that is all changing now that the Democrats have achieved the biggest political victory in decades. America likes winners and likes ideas, two things the GOP is devoid of.  The GOP will pay a political price for their attempts at obstruction and demonization of a bill the majority of Americans now favor. The GOP was banking on successfully stopping the Obama agenda but that is not how it played out and they were left holding all the political liability. Now the GOP vows to run on “repeal, replace and reform”. History shows that once a bill is passed it becomes more and more popular leaving the GOP on the wrong side of history…once again.

This obstruction has been combined with the GOP’s willingness to play to their angry and radical base further moving them out of the American mainstream. They have allowed their party to be hijacked by a small fringe group partially comprised of racists and xenophobes. The GOP has not spoke out against this small but vocal minority allowing their rhetoric to ostracize many moderates.  The overblown rhetoric about death panels and Communist takeover will be shown to be outright lies now that reform has passed.

Obama seems to be a master at peaking just at the right time. During the Democratic primary everyone thought Hillary Clinton was going to take the nomination easily. Many of the Obama supporters including myself got a bit worried asserting that Obama was not fighting hard enough. Obama just sat back and made his move right in time to win the Iowa caucus propelling him to the eventual nomination. Once in the general election, Obama sat back and allowed McCain to waste his political momentum after the pick of Sara Palin only to turn up the intensity once again at the exact right moment to sustain him through the election. President Obama laid forth an ambitious agenda that included comprehensive health care reform, something his own advisors thought was political suicide. Obama waited and allowed the GOP to work itself into a frenzy during the summer knowing that the intensity could not be sustained. Once the opposition had lost their momentum Obama went to work in series of political events designed to recapture the momentum. One State of the Union, several town hall meetings and a health care forum later and we have comprehensive health care.  Obama’s rope a dope strategy once again worked to perfection, pouncing just as the opposition lost its steam.

It appears this strategy will be employed just in time to stem the losses in the 2010 midterm elections. History shows that this should be a huge year for the GOP but they may have squandered any chance of retaking the majority.  Combine that with a weak economy and the GOP should have a cakewalk this November. I ask again…has the GOP peaked too soon? Obama and the Democrats plan on riding this victory into November and in all likelihood have saved their majority.  The can credibly appeal to the American people on actual legislative victories that have expanded coverage and protected the rights of millions of patients all without the help of a single Republican.

In conclusion, Obama seems to be a master at picking and choosing the right time to put the political pedal to the floor.  While the GOP may pick up seats it will pale in comparison to what they hoped and what history shows they should have achieved.  The GOP is in danger of having a complete failure on their hands if they are not careful how they proceed the next few months. America does not like angry pessimistic politicians and for months that is all the GOP has offered. It is impossible to know exactly how events will unfold by November but it is clear that 2010 has started off great for Obama and the Democrats.  Obama’s rope a dope strategy has once again scored a knockout and it remains to be seen whether the GOP has the ability for a rematch.

The executive order seems to be going over fairly well with the pro-choice caucus and should not bubble into an internal debate within the Democratic party. The order only reiterates existing laws and by no means steps on the existing rights woman have over their bodies. This was a savvy, pragmatic move by President Obama to secure the needed votes.

This is the difference between the two parties and clearly shows the Democratic party to be the big tent party. The Democrats have positioned themselves well and can credibly offer a sensible alternative to the GOP with regards to pro-life politics. While the GOP is narrowing their base and playing to the extremes the Democratic party is quietly moving to the middle with a centrist health care bill.

The bill being passed is not perfect but clearly moves us in the right direction. It expands coverage to 95% of all Americans or roughly 31 million additional people. It strengthens insurance regulations by protecting the patient from annual and life time caps awarded. It ends the insurance company practices of banning people with pre-existing conditions or rescinding policies the minute you become an expensive liability.  The bill has many other great provisions like increasing the age a student can stay on their parents insurance from 21 to 26 provided they are still in school as a full time student.

This is a major victory for Obama and the Democrats setting the stage for a reconciliation vote in the Senate to make amendments to the bill they already passed. The GOP will undoubtedly attack the Democrats on a completely legal Senatorial procedure to no avail. Health care reform is closer to passing now than at any point in the last several decades. Obama’s primary policy is all but certain to pass regardless of the GOP’s objections handing them a stunning political defeat. Once the bill is passed and the country realizes that all the scare tactics by the GOP were lies and actually feel the benefits history shows that the bill will become very popular. This victory by the Democrats and Obama may have squelched the political momentum the GOP was counting on going into 2010. The GOP will run on repealing this bill to their peril and may have already painted themselves into a political corner to which there is no escape.

House Democrats say the legislation will cost $940 billion over 10 years and will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion in that first decade.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the legislation will deliver the biggest reduction in the federal deficit since the 1990s, while providing access to health care coverage for nearly all Americans and prohibiting insurance companies from denying coverage to the sick.

Hoyer also said Thursday that the chamber is on track to vote on the overhaul bill on Sunday.

It’s the same day Obama plans to leave for an overseas trip. The president has already delayed the trip once so he can be present for the vote and help with the 11th-hour arm-twisting that inevitably will precede it.

“You’ve got to realize how complicated this is and how focused we are on getting it right,”  Hoyer said Wednesday near the end of a long day of meetings on the legislation. “We’re waiting to get a real confidence level.”

Obama expressed optimism in an interview with Fox News Channel. “I’m confident it will pass,” he said. “And the reason I’m confident that it’s going to pass is because it’s the right thing to do.”

Democrats are seeking to make sure the legislation would reduce federal deficits annually over the next decade and are revisiting details of a planned tax on high-cost insurance plans that’s been a sticking point for organized labor. Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO, met with Obama at the White House on Wednesday, and officials said the labor leader raised concerns. Obama has proposed significantly softening the tax in keeping with an earlier deal with organized labor, and labor leaders want to preserve that accord, at a minimum.

Trumka was to brief members of the AFL-CIO’s executive council on Thursday, and the federation was expected to announce whether it would support the legislation.

The long-anticipated measure is actually the second of two bills that Obama hopes lawmakers will send him in coming days, more than a year after he urged Congress to remake the U.S. health care system. The first cleared the Senate late last year but went no further because House Democrats demanded significant changes — the very types of revisions now being packaged into the second bill.

Together, the measures are designed to extend coverage to more than 30 million who now lack it and prohibit insurance industry practices such as denying coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Obama also has asked lawmakers to slow the growth of medical spending generally, a far more difficult goal to achieve. The total cost is around $1 trillion over 10 years.

After heavy lobbying from Obama, liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, announced his support Wednesday, becoming the first Democrat to declare he would vote in favor of the legislation after opposing an earlier version. Shortly after Kucinich’s announcement, a letter was released from 60 leaders of religious orders urging lawmakers to vote for the legislation.

The endorsement reflected a division within the Catholic Church. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposes the Senate-passed legislation, contending it would permit the use of federal funds for elective abortions.

Late Wednesday, however, retired Bishop John E. McCarthy of Austin, Texas, told The Associated Press he was urging approval of the legislation.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35928063/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

While the bill is not perfect it is a step in the right direction. The Health care bill will make major steps towards ending the bad practices the insurance companies are know for. The plan will take several years to fully implement but by 2014 we should see the full effects of the bill. It will help control the long term debt while insuring millions of new people. Hopefully this will be followed with stronger reforms in the years to come.,

Do we really want a strong leader?  We already refer to the president as the ‘Leader of the Free World’ and yet no where in the Constitution do we give the President such a lofty title or duty.  George Washington went by Mr. President or at least preferred to go by that title.  If it was good enough for him, why is it not good enough for us now?  Our founding fathers feared a “strong leader.”  Libya, Cuba, Iran, Iraq (well not so long ago at least), North Korea, North and South Vietnam, China, the former Soviet Union, present day Russia, most African countries, they all have “strong leaders.”  Men who command power via the perceived qualities of strength.  They decide the direction of their country and their country follows.  None of these ideals are American.  Nowhere in the Constitution does the president have the authority to do that.  Executive orders are a somewhat gray area and I find it odd that my alleged conservative friends don’t take issue with them given they are not explicitly granted power in Article Two of the Constitution.  Note that it’s Article Two, not Article One, that is for the president.  He comes second, not first, and while he balances the other two branches he does not rise above them.  Congress has largely given war powers to the President to respond to a rapidly changing world.  He is the commander-in-chief of the military (not of civilians despite us also using that powerful and strong title for him), but this does not give him the power to send us to war.  We’ve given Presidents power out of fear.  We did it after 9/11 and we’ve done it many times before.  We think we need a strong leader to make tough decisions in fearful times.  We don’t.

Sticking to their guns is something the presidency is supposed to embody though not in the manner we’ve seen lately.  The presidency was designed to be just a bit more insulated from the whims of the people than the House of Representatives or even the Senate is.  The President’s job is to run the executive branch and that ability can be hampered greatly if the whim of weekly changing public opinion gets in the way.  Of course we’ve let that part happen while at the same time voting for ideological hard heads who talk up a tough campaign and then get into office only to realize they don’t have the authority to stick to their guns.  Whoops.  But we admire them for going down in flames and taking the country with them.  Whether it’s Reagan’s supply side economics or Bush Sr.’s ‘read my lips’ promises to Clinton’s insistence on always taking the middle of the road ideology to Bush Jr’s everything.   And now Obama will show us how he intends to play healthcare reform.  He has two choices.  He can play it as a president or as partisan ideologue who feels compelled to give into his bases’ wishes for the sake of getting re-elected.  I hope for the former but expect the latter.

Why would we want one person to have the ability to change how our government works?  I know why, it’s because we watch too many movies.  We see these heroic loners who go in and shake up the whole system.  Neo in the Matrix, any Western, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, all of these movies talk about how one person can change the world.  Well that’s just not true.  It sounds very inspirational especially with Hollywood scoring in the background but our Constitution makes it virtually impossible for any one person to change how the government works.  Congress is supposed to be slow and to drag out debate.  That’s not a sign of it being broken but rather functioning as intended.  It should be hard to pass large and sweeping legislation no matter how vital it is because when you make it easy you subject it to shifts in the political winds and the possibility that someone will find a way to destroy the delicate balance of democracy we live in.  The President is not given the power to change Washington.  In fact, he has the least ability to do so.  His ability to change things without oversight is limited to the departments that report to him and they are all limited severely by the law and the courts.  The President can’t write his own bills despite our apparent desire that the President should as we expect President’s to get major legislation passed so we can score the office holder based on quantity.  It’s a stupid standard and a stupid thing to expect from the Office of the President.  Most importantly, it’s not the President’s job.

My favorite is the guy I’d like to have a beer with.  The common every-man.  A comedian whose name I can’t recall said, “Next time you’re in a bar having a beer, take a look around.  See any presidents?”  Of course not.  They are all drinking single malt 100 year old Scotch at country clubs that would never let any of us in.  Even the Reagan’s and Bush’s are.  Just because someone wears flannel instead of a suit doesn’t make him an ordinary or common man.  We elect blue blood, highly educated rich men to the presidency.  The last common man that was president was Harry Truman and it’s not to say that he was better or worse than an FDR or a JFK, but he was a common man.  Too often, we ascribe common sense as something we think Washington has little of.  But common sense has become a virtue of the ignorant, something that Sarah Palin claims to have loads of and yet I wouldn’t trust her with a potato gun much less nuclear weapons.  The Presidency requires someone who can empathize, not someone who simply looks for the common solution every time.  Harry Truman wasn’t a Harvard graduate, but he was able to see beyond the common sense solution and consider the consequences.  He didn’t drop the atomic bomb because it made sense, he did it because he had more reasons to do it than not.  Problems that our government faces don’t always have a right and wrong answer.  They often have several answers and any number of them can be acceptable though different solutions.  A president needs the ability to see that.  Not to have the stain of what they learned in the first eighteen years of their life dictate their actions as President.  I don’t care if my president drinks beer or the finest liquors.  It’s an irrelevant and silly measure of the person in office.

And then there’s the ever important three in the morning phone call.  I don’t doubt the White House gets many calls at three in the morning.  I wonder how many the president sleeps through.  Probably many more than we think.  Making those decisions, like the atomic bomb decision above, isn’t something anyone is ready for until they have to do it.  There is no litmus test for that.  A candidate can say one thing on the campaign trail and get into office only to discover that what they thought they knew is wrong or that the process won’t let them meet their prior goals.  The three in the morning phone call is a moment where there is no way to measure how someone would respond.  Anyone who can answer how they would respond is speculating at best and lying at worst.  We can only hope we vote for someone smart enough to surround themselves with people smarter than them who may have a good answer for that phone call.

So what should our president be like?  Well ever since Washington, they’ve sort of gone towards what we have today.  Adams faced bitter partisanship that paralyzed his administration at times.  Jefferson became the first of many small government promising presidential candidates to expand the powers of government as he did with the Louisiana Purchase.  This unproven theory of small government flies in the face of what most of us want from our country which is to be number one in everything.  You don’t get there by being cheap.  I prefer my presidents to be like Dwight Eisenhower.  Maybe not like him in terms of all of his politics, but his demeanor.  I don’t care if the president plays more rounds of golf than the number of bills they push through Congress.  I’d prefer the president to do their job outlined in the Constitution.  And nothing more.  I’d prefer them to be Mr. President, and no more.  They don’t need to lead the free world or even us.  They need to administrative branch and let Congress do its job.  They need to get declarations of war instead of using the War Powers Act.  They need to stop being celebrities and we need to stop making them into something more than they are.  A person we vote into a temp job.  They are an office holder, a caretaker, not a leader.  For a nation that talks up our Constitution, we need to live by it a bit more.