2012 Presidential Election is upon us! 4 years have gone by too fast. Seems like only yesterday we elected our first non-white president, Barack Obama. The racists called bullshit, everyone else was glowing with the thoughts of change and equality. The United States were finally ridding itself of President George W Bush, and putting behind us the wreck he left. Gone were the memories of failures and ineptitude. Gone are the memories of his horrible speeches that were only good to make fun of. It was time for a fresh breath of air.
I, myself, celebrated the night at a Democrats election party in the heart of NYC. The polls and voting up on big screens everywhere, drinks and food in abundance. People celebrating America. It was a beautiful sight. There was an overwhelming feeling of “togetherness”. I remember that night, after the final tally and Obama had won, riding back to Long Island on the dreaded LIRR. People were wide eyed and excited about what was in store for America. They knew things would be different. They believed that America was going to become a better place. A place we all believed it could be. Everything was going to be alright.
Now, here we are again. This year, there isn’t that electric feeling of history. There isn’t that togetherness feeling. There isn’t that feeling of hope. There isn’t that feeling of things are going to get better. People seem hopeless. As if, no matter what we do, we will be stuck in a rut. As if there is nothing we can do. People talk about how things have not change, and perhaps gotten worse in the past 4 years. People are over-analyzing and dissecting every moment of the last Presidency. I sit and listen. Some have good, valid points. Most have ridiculous and false stat-filled opinions. While listening to most, the one thing I walk away understanding is, most Americans complain about the United States government, and only a very small few seem to know how it works. People believe the President has ALL the pull. Like he has final say in what happens and he’s the sole person responsible for everything. They have no idea that things have to go thru channels, voted upon by different levels. Bills are written and re-written, Democrats and Republicans edit and negotiate deals. Things are a LOT more complicated than many seem to realize. Do most people know that the House rejected some of Obamas requests? Probably not.
Now, I’m neither Democrat or Republican. And, personally, I think both labels are ridiculous and sway peoples thinking with which “gang” they join. I would much rather everything be based on what people are saying and thinking and not the tag they label themselves as. We sometimes just look at elections as choosing the “lesser of two evils” because, well, we’ve grown to think of elections as such.
With that said, the President is merely a figurehead in the US. They only have the power WE grant them. They have their hands tied if we say so. Look at it this way, remember in class when you’re broken into groups, and you elect one person of your group to be the “speaker” and they usually are the final “yey/ney” in the group? That’s what the president is. Just the speaker of the people. But, recently, people have been bashing Obama. I mean, seriously, what made him a bad president these past 4 years? Because the National Deficit it higher? Well, if you know anything about business, it takes money to make money. Sadly, it’s true. And he spent money to make sure that businesses in the United States didn’t go out of business. We complain about how he “bailed out GM” and CEO’s. But, did you think of how many jobs he saved and created by doing so? And that is money made and spent in the United States. One of his first tasks as President was freezing White House salaries and anointing people to oversee spending and National reform.
People complain about how Obama and the Democrats don’t like the military. Untrue. While republicans focus more on military, that doesn’t take away from Obama. He doesn’t have personal businesses overseas like some other politicians, so probably doesn’t see a reason to be all in other countries business. He may not have personally killed Osama Bin Laden himself, but he pushed for it harder than Bush apparently. Bush spent 6 months “searching for Osama”, then refocused his search to Saddam Hussain. Why? Because he had businesses that depended on the oil that Saddam was jeopardizing. Obama has been focused on getting our people out of war zones and home safely. He’s pushed to get rid of outdated weapons and provide updated and more effective weapons.
As for jobs? Well, he has stimulated the economy by over 4% in his 4 years. And that’s just the beginning. He oversaw the creation of more jobs in one year than Bush did in 8. Unemployment has dropped since he’s been in office. But, people expected EVERYONE to have jobs within months of his election. How? I know many people that are still too lazy to work hard at their jobs. Or people that are able-bodied and aren’t even looking for jobs. At some point, personal responsibility has to come into play. What? Is he supposed to personally come to each and every one of our homes and walk us to a new job? Sorry, you can’t afford a $60K car or mansion. But most people make enough to survive, and that’s more than what many other countries can say. But, we aren’t satisfied until we can get the biggest of everything. Have huge flatscreen TV’s in every room. We are greedy. And we like to blame someone else for our greed not being satisfied. That’s all.
Anyways......my point for sitting down in the first place is to say this. We have to start showing more support to our Presidents. We have to ALL look in the mirror and say to ourselves “What can I do to make myself and my situation better?”. And, we have to be patient. Things don’t happen overnight. Sports fans, you know it takes at least 5 years for a team to rebuild. You have to endure some really shitty seasons before you start making it into the playoffs again. And that’s just to get 12/25/60 people on the right track and on the same page. We expect ONE MAN to do that to a WHOLE nation in less than 4 years? C’mon, let’s be realistic. That can’t happen. By the time all his bills and ideas get into affect, by the time plans start forming and getting all the hiccups out of the way, it’s time for re-election.
We must do something to change the length of term. Four years just isn’t enough. We need to up it to 6 years. 6/12 year terms would be more effective. Imagine if Clinton had 12 years? We’d be in great shape. So, how do we make this happen?
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