Is a portion of America becoming everything that once deplored in the process of getting everything they think they want?
People are calling this a victory for America.
It may be true: there are some aspects of the health care bill that we need in place to reform the broken system here in the United States. At the same time, we continue to see a murky vision of where we are going as a nation under this administration and, at some point, we need to address it more than we tackled other issues in America recently.
Since the emergence of the Obama Administration, we have seen the exact opposite of the campaign mantra that we were given by candidate Barack Obama during the 2007-2008 presidential run. Surprisingly and sadly, there is a segment of America – and notably a huge section of Black America – willing to forget the campaign promises because, in their minds, “he’s on our team.”
With the recent health care bill passage, there were plenty of examples showing that the breach between the ethos of candidate Obama and President Obama was complete.
Bipartisanship? The Obama Promise of working together was quickly gone as the Democrats regularly labeled the Republicans the “Party of No”, despite these legislators repeatedly offering health care solutions and amendments that made sense. In the end, the GOP was completely shut out of the process, leaving it to be a small wonder that every Republican in the House voted “no” along with 30 or so Congressional Democrats.
Transparency? The Obama Promise went out the window with that as well as closed-door meetings among top Democrats locked out not only the Republicans but the American people as well. Remember those C-SPAN debates promised by candidate Obama? Now, do you ever remember seeing those debates? That answer – which would be “no” – would also lead you to see why you didn’t see any solutions being offered by the “Party of No”, by the way.
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Speaking of transparency – what happened to the 5-day pledge that candidate Obama made? The pledge stated simply that, if he became president, Mr. Obama would allow the American people 5 days to review the bill before signing it into law.
And the change in the culture in Washington? Anyone following the manner through which the Obama Administration has operated to date must notice that everything that the president’s team has “accomplished” so far has worked to use every political trick in the book, from twisting congressional rules in order to pass controversial legislation by partisan force or by twisting arms of members within their own party in order to make them cave in and side along political lines, not their political or ethical beliefs.
All of those things do not seem to matter to Obama supporters anymore, primarily because they are getting what they perceive that they want from the president. Yet, in a strange bit of irony, what they initially asked of Mr. Obama were the very things that he now contravenes: cooperation in government, bipartisanship, openness, and solutions that we all agree benefits Americans. At the
