By Matt Barber
Monday, October 22, 2012
Did you vote for Barack Obama in 2008? A lot of people
did – obviously.
What a time. There’s still room for improvement, but what
a testimony to just how far we as a nation have come in terms of racial
harmony, tolerance and diversity.
Only decades earlier a man like Barack Obama – a black
man – couldn’t even drink from the same water fountain as a white man, let
alone become president of the United States. A hundred years prior to that, and
he may well have been counted another man’s property.
On Nov. 4, 2008, millions gathered at the ballot box to
prove, once and for all, that, in large measure, we as a nation have healed
from our disgraceful, self-inflicted wounds of racial abuse, bias and division.
That we could elect an African-American to lead the free
world is indeed a very good thing.
We just happened to elect the wrong African-American.
In life, we sometimes find that the idea of a thing is
far better than the thing itself. As a boy, I once ordered, from a comic book,
a pair of X-ray glasses that promised to allow me to see the bones beneath my
hand (my motives were a bit more ignoble). The two weeks it took for the
glasses to arrive seemed like an eternity.
Once they did arrive, I ripped into the package and put
them on, darting my head to-and-fro. It’s difficult to express my level of
disappointment. As I quickly discovered, the glasses merely formed a halo
effect around objects, creating the illusion of transparency. I felt
embarrassed. I got took.
Barack Obama’s presidency has been a halo effect. Like I
did so many years ago, in 2008 America fell victim to false advertising. As the
past four years have demonstrated beyond any serious debate, the idea of
President Obama was far better than the reality of President Obama. We were
promised the world. We were promised transparency; but we were sold an
illusion. We got took.
Indeed, during the 2008 campaign, a then-Sen. Barack
Obama promised us that, if elected, we would look back upon the moment he took
office and “tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide
care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the
rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the
moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the
last, best hope on earth.”
That was the idea of President Obama. That was what many
good, well-meaning people voted for. That was the hope offered and the change
promised.
That was not what we got.
Though it’s certainly not a comprehensive analysis,
during the second presidential debate, Mitt Romney, in response to Mr. Obama’s
attempts to gloss over his mounting leadership failures, summarized a few of
the big ones. While addressing an audience member who, perhaps like you, voted
for Obama in 2008, Romney observed, in part, the following:
He said that, by now, we’d have unemployment at 5.4
percent. The difference between where it is and 5.4 percent is 9 million
Americans without work. …
He said he would have, by now, put forward a plan to
reform Medicare and Social Security, because he pointed out they’re on the road
to bankruptcy. He would reform them. He’d get that done. He hasn’t even made a
proposal on either one.
He said in his first year he’d put out an immigration
plan that would deal with our immigration challenges. Didn’t even file it.
This is a president who has not been able to do what he
said he’d do. He said that he’d cut in half the deficit. He hasn’t done that
either. In fact, he doubled it.
He said that by now middle-income families would have a
reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by
$2,500 a year. And if Obamacare is … implemented fully, it’ll be another
$2,500. …
The middle class is getting crushed under the policies of
a president who has not understood what it takes to get the economy working
again. … [T]he number of people who are still looking for work is still 23
million Americans.
There are more people in poverty, one out of six people
in poverty.
How about food stamps? When he took office, 32 million
people were on food stamps. Today, 47 million people are on food stamps. How
about the growth of the economy? It’s growing more slowly this year than last
year – and more slowly last year than the year before. …
The president has tried, but his policies haven’t worked.
That’s why I was so taken aback. Although we saw dozens
of people wearing Romney stickers, we only saw one man wearing an Obama
sticker.
We walked up to a fellow with a gray pony tail, John
Lennon glasses and Birkenstocks. He was wearing a Romney sticker.
“Mind if I ask why you’re voting for Mitt Romney?” I
asked. “I assume you are.”
His reply – and these were his words, not mine – was
short and to the point: “Because I refuse to be that stupid twice.”
Changing one’s mind doesn’t always reveal a tendency
toward indecision. Sometimes, changing one’s mind reveals a tendency toward
wisdom.
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