For guidance,
they can turn back to a primary source about the ups and downs of life with
Barack Obama—-Michelle Obama herself. Back in 2007, the future First Lady
warned against expecting too much from him:
“Barack
is very much human. So let’s not deify him, because what we do is we deify, and
then we’re ready to chop it down. People have notions of what a wife’s role
should be in this process, and it’s been a traditional one of blind adoration.
My model is a little different--I think most real marriages are.”
Mrs.
Obama could not have foreseen how much chopping down would occur in her husband’s
first term, how the politics of hope would morph into the politics of nope with
wall-to-wall GOP refusal to man the fire hoses as the national economy was
burning down.
Now,
as Mitt Romney woos the most unlikely constituencies, the question is: Do
voters have to rekindle that 2008 rapture to escape their frying pan/fire
dilemma? Can a new generation of young people, facing unemployment after college,
fall in love with Obama now as they did then? Or must politics, like most
marriages, go beyond that first fine passion and evolve into respect, sharing
and caring?
Those
are the questions this summer and fall. As they look for answers, voters may
want to consider Michelle Obama herself, a woman of her time who knows that “blind
adoration” is a myth of the old politics, in which wives gazed at their
husbands like inflatable dolls during a campaign.
Americans
may not be as much in love with Barack Obama this time, but do they want a
four-year fling with the likes of Mitt Romney?
I think, as we get closer to the election, most of us (older folks) will start to feel that "Obama fever" again. And to tell the truth, I always had a feeling in the back of my mind that he was promising too much, not that that tempered my enthusiam for him the first time.
ReplyDeleteI have never stopped loving Obama, principally because I refused from the outset to deify him. That's as racist as the Saintly Negro, who showed up in a few 1980s/90s movies suffering from either a speech impediment, mild retardation or both, as well as a common wisdom that in the end showed the white people a thing or two. I'm white, but that always made me barf. Love you, Mr. President, gray hair and all!
ReplyDeletePeggy Noonan writes in her "Ennui.." article that the current campaign lacks the drama and fire of the 1932 and 1980 elections.
ReplyDeleteSorry, Peg, no hostage crisis this time. No Great Depression, either. Check out a Yankees game for more excitement.
Also, when it comes to getting things done, it takes two to tango. The extent to which the Senate Republicans have used the filibuster has shown us all how a hostile party can just about shut down a government.