Is President Obama Over the Hill?

photo by opblmagelibry / flickr

Pick up almost any paper or listen to our pompous pundits and you would believe the President is sleeping late, playing a lot of golf and waiting around for his tenure to end. Some are whispering: “Jimmy Carter...Jimmy Carter.” With all hell breaking loose it seems all over our country people are muttering: “Why doesn’t he do something.”  Even those of us who have supported him from the beginning—find ourselves disenchanted. Democrats are already slowly pushing Obama aside and talking about our new Savior. Hillary. We forget the President has two years left in his second term. Please put Mrs. Clinton on hold.

So when I read James Mann’s article in this morning’s New York Times it set me to thinking. Read it for yourself.  I think the scholar in residence at Johns Hopkins has something important to say.

He began by reminding us that more than two years before Ronald Reagan’s second term, the columnist George Will—certainly no liberal—intoned: “When an administration collapses, quickly and completely a reasonable surmise is that the administration, like a balloon, had nothing in it but air.” Mr. Mann reminded us that Reagan’s last two years were some of the most important in his presidency. Then Mr. Mann reminds us that almost every two-term President has faced the same dissatisfaction as he moves toward his finish line. At this stage in their presidencies Bill Clinton and George Bush, like Mr. Reagan before them were written off as finished—even by some of their strongest supporters. Yet—Mr. Mann footnotes the accomplishments of Reagan, Clinton and Bush during the last years of their time in office. Each of these men made enormous progress for the country during the days that even their supporters were shaking their heads.

I guess I’m old fashioned. I go back to my grade-school days when we were taught that George Washington was just about perfect. I had yet to read some of his history. Mr. Roosevelt was President at that time and everybody in our little cotton-mill village thought he was the closest thing to Jesus we had ever seen. So I grew up believing that the Prezzident was somebody. In some ways I still do.

We only have one Commander in Chief. I wonder what signals we are sending to ISIS when we can’t even support Mr. Obama during this crisis time. I’ve read enough history to know no president is perfect—what little history I have read has told me otherwise. Yet—I hope and pray that Mr. Obama’s last two years will be the best he has had. This whole issue transcends Democrats and Republicans—and really is about if we care more about our own little turf and opinions than we do about this great land.

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--RogerLovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com