Let’s Take Our Country Back

I hate that phrase;  it’s on the lips of every armchair, bumper sticker moron in the country.

Here’s a column from the old Joe Klein who N and I miss so much.

When He's Good and Ready

By Joe Klein Monday, Oct. 17, 2011

Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,2096292,00.html

Klein’s punch line is that inexperience in the White House is always a disaster.  Cases in point during my lifetime:  Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.  Klein suggests we need a President who says, "I'm not an outsider.  I know Washington cold.  I actually know how to fix the engine."  I agree.

The President’s campaign folks have Obama out there trying out various campaign strategies – I think a President, especially in these times, should be running the country, not campaigning more than a year in advance of voting.   A President who cares more about a second term than doing his job should get what he’s earned. 

I believe that his “jobs program” was conceived as a political ploy rather than a solution and that the public is not and will not be fooled.  His program would be insignificant even if it passed and not even Democrats are willing to vote for it.  He did it, in my opinion, not to help the nation but to set up a campaign strategy.

The strategy I’m thinking of has already failed.  It’s the one that goes, “It’s not me, it’s Congress and especially those nasty Republicans.  I want to do the right thing but those Republicans won’t let me.”  To my ear that’s whining.  I think voters will exhibit two convictions:  first, that a President has to have the leadership skills to get “the enemy” to cooperate on major national issues;  and second, that any failed President has to go.

We can only hope that Republicans will remember that we’ve had enough of inexperience in the White House and that twits, fringe loonies and opportunists have no chance of winning a race for dogcatcher let alone beating an incumbent American President.  More importantly, we have to hope that the vast silent majority also remembers these things and takes the trouble to vote in the Republican Presidential primaries in record numbers.

We too should want to “take our country back” or at least not cede it to any bumper sticker policy making or street rabble.