12 July 2010
Rebalancing Government
Recently I have considered changing the title of this blog, or beginning a new one. The reason behind all of this deep thought is my wanting to create a distance between the world of the Bush/Cheney years from the new world of Obama/Biden and beyond.
I will keep the same title for now. I had great hopes for the Obama/Biden administration after the 2008 November election. Many of my hopes vanished when Nancy Pelosi announced that the bringing of legal proceedings against the prior administration was not on the table. In addition, I find the current appellation is still relevant to the way the Obama Administration operates. This saddens me because I believe there were criminal actions for which people should be tried. Mr. Obama's approach to governing, his mode of trying to make each branch of government work as they were intended, may be the approach our country needs at this time.
Since Nixon was President, more and more power accreted to the Executive Branch and that trend culminated in the most willfull distain for our Constitutional form of government by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condelezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld in our history. It should not surprise anyone that the public continues to look to the White House for the definitive word for solving our problems. When President Obama waits for Congress to initiate and fund actions in response to a crisis, the media and the Republicans criticize him for weakness or for failing to act. Even his senior staff seem prone to wait for word from the Oval Office before going public with their responses and actions. I write that off to the number of long-timers who occupy senior positions in the Obama Administration.
One criticism of Mr. Obama is that he has lost touch with the people who elected him. Over this past weekend, one political commentator compared Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The comparison to FDR did not go well for Mr. Obama. The commentator emphasized the difference between these two Presidents by playing a film clip from the 1944 funeral cortege watchers on Pennsylvania Avenue. A teary-eyed Black woman was asked by a reporter if she had known FDR. The woman replied, "No, I did not know the President, but he knew me."
He knew me. Mr. Obama has tremendous responsibilities for righting the economy, for bringing into a consensus the Democratic majority in Congress, for continuing measures to implement the Health Care Act and for embodying civilian leadership in the conduct of two wars. I doubt that anyone could make the case that Barack Obama faces more difficult tasks than did FDR. FDR, however, did not succeed in every way, such as his failure to nationalize many aspects of the economy needed to climb out of the Depression, nor did he address racial discrimination in America. His failures reflect the workings of our political dynamics of the 1930's and 1940's. So, today, Mr. Obama's failures are not symptoms of inadequacy or weakness; they reflect the interactions of the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Executive as separate, equal centers of governing power in 2010.
His clients--you and me--have to speak our minds about our concerns, too. We have to be more forthcoming in our letters, emails and phone calls to the White House, in addition to our elected Congressional members. We have to do our part for him to do better.
Sherfdog
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I will keep the same title for now. I had great hopes for the Obama/Biden administration after the 2008 November election. Many of my hopes vanished when Nancy Pelosi announced that the bringing of legal proceedings against the prior administration was not on the table. In addition, I find the current appellation is still relevant to the way the Obama Administration operates. This saddens me because I believe there were criminal actions for which people should be tried. Mr. Obama's approach to governing, his mode of trying to make each branch of government work as they were intended, may be the approach our country needs at this time.
Since Nixon was President, more and more power accreted to the Executive Branch and that trend culminated in the most willfull distain for our Constitutional form of government by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condelezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld in our history. It should not surprise anyone that the public continues to look to the White House for the definitive word for solving our problems. When President Obama waits for Congress to initiate and fund actions in response to a crisis, the media and the Republicans criticize him for weakness or for failing to act. Even his senior staff seem prone to wait for word from the Oval Office before going public with their responses and actions. I write that off to the number of long-timers who occupy senior positions in the Obama Administration.
One criticism of Mr. Obama is that he has lost touch with the people who elected him. Over this past weekend, one political commentator compared Barack Obama to Franklin D. Roosevelt. The comparison to FDR did not go well for Mr. Obama. The commentator emphasized the difference between these two Presidents by playing a film clip from the 1944 funeral cortege watchers on Pennsylvania Avenue. A teary-eyed Black woman was asked by a reporter if she had known FDR. The woman replied, "No, I did not know the President, but he knew me."
He knew me. Mr. Obama has tremendous responsibilities for righting the economy, for bringing into a consensus the Democratic majority in Congress, for continuing measures to implement the Health Care Act and for embodying civilian leadership in the conduct of two wars. I doubt that anyone could make the case that Barack Obama faces more difficult tasks than did FDR. FDR, however, did not succeed in every way, such as his failure to nationalize many aspects of the economy needed to climb out of the Depression, nor did he address racial discrimination in America. His failures reflect the workings of our political dynamics of the 1930's and 1940's. So, today, Mr. Obama's failures are not symptoms of inadequacy or weakness; they reflect the interactions of the Congress, the Supreme Court and the Executive as separate, equal centers of governing power in 2010.
What Mr. Obama cannot afford to do is lose connection with the public. As a lawyer, he needs to understand his clients better. This task cannot be delegated to his lieutenants or limited to periodic town hall meetings. President Obama needs to hear from us more directly in a way that is unfiltered by administrators with their own agendas.
Sherfdog
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