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Doomed to repeated failure?

There are a few very basic facts that seem to have escaped our general consciousness. For starters, had Hillary managed to beat Obama out for the democratic nomination, she would have beaten John McCain. The democrats could have thrown Spongebob into the fray, and he would have beaten John McCain. The simple fact is that we, as a country, were simply not going to elect a republican to the oval office.

That having been said, I am not inferring that Obama was unworthy. I voted for him. But as we approach a year in office, It occurs to me that there is one campaign promise he has not only not followed through on, but taken the exact opposite direction. And it is, unfortunately, perhaps the most important promise he made.

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He has, in spite of what the right wing would have you believe, followed through on the majority of his commitments. Many haven’t been popular with the other side of the aisle, but he has, for the most part, been exactly what he said he would. Limbaugh and his cronies spit on about socialism, but it isn’t as if Obama is surprising us here. Label it Socialism if you wish, but if that’s what it is, we knew it when we elected him.

But what we need to do is look at why we were so hell bent on electing a democrat. Eight years of George W’s right wing garbage burned us out, simple as that. Democrats spent the bulk of his term complaining about how he and his elephant cronies were imposing their moral and political beliefs on us on everything from gay marriage to the war in Iraq. We got so filled up on right wing agenda that we felt we had no choice but to change the channel.

Thus is the farce of our pathetic two party political system. The middle ground is becoming a thing of the past. George Bush drove a wedge between the two existing parties, to the point where virtually every major political decision is decided not on its merits, but along party lines. Which brings us to the one promise Obama has blatantly broken, which was to attempt to bring the parties together. What he has instead done is drive the wedge that the Bush administration pushed in far deeper. From the day he took office, he has by far been the most liberal president in our history; aggressively pushing his policies forward, plowing through the opposing party’s views when necessary.

I agree with the majority of his decisions, but my opinion isn’t the only one that matters. And neither is his; he is effectively duplicating the mistakes made by his predecessor. The party split in the United States is close to being down the middle, which means that half our country are going to disagree with most of his decisions. As president, he speaks for America as a whole, not just the half that shares his party affiliation.

Sadly, it is unlikely that the system will change. We are far too entrenched in our ways, and equally influenced by popular media. We will continue to follow the same path we have for generations, in spite of the fact that that ours is slowly decaying in its effectiveness. The main reason I voted for the man was because I sincerely believed he would attempt to bridge the gap. We are failing to grasp the notion that in life, there is rarely a completely ‘right’ or ‘left’ solution to any issue; as in the real world, the solution often lies in that gray area in between. Simple logic dictates, then, that if we systematically destroy that gray area, we will be hard pressed to solve anything.

So what is the solution here? Simple, yet unlikely. Our presidents need to stop trying to run our country as a dictatorship. Bullying views through on one end of the extreme or the other hasn’t worked to date; why do we insist on believing it will suddenly start? The old adage rings ever so true… insanity is defined as repeating the same act continuously and expecting a different result.

Otherwise we will continue to make the same mistakes continuously; Obama will win a second term, for the same reason Bush did; we didn’t want to change presidents in the midst of a crisis with W, and we’re not likely to do so this time either. And in 2016, having gorged ourselves on liberalism, we will find another Bush and swing the teeter totter back. And so the spiraling demise of America will continue.