Four more years

Four years ago, I wrote this post after Obama was first elected.  I re-read both Obama's original speech and what I wrote, and this morning I am thinking about how the past four years have played out compared to the earnest hope I felt then.

Summary - it's been real tough.  The economy was worse than anyone thought, and that alone has dampened even the greatest accomplishments of the administration.  Still, some of the discrepancy between expectation and reality must fall upon Obama himself, who obviously over-estimated his own ability to change things in Washington.  Whether you call it cockiness, overconfidence, or even delusion...that attitude hurt the public's opinion of Obama.

Still, it takes cooperation to get things done in politics, and despite words suggesting cooperation with the Republican congressional leaders would be possible, they opposed every move of the administration:
- On health care, a bitter battle, even though the Obama administrations framework included almost every recommendation and compromise originally supported by republican health care reformers, most importantly their candidate Mitt Romney.
- On the economy, Republicans fought anti-recession government deficit spending.  This was despite supporting nearly the same thing under the Bush administration...
- On debt and the debt ceiling, willing to derail the fragile economic recovery on 100% political grounds; unwilling to accept even extremely grand compromises offered by Obama and Reid.  Compromises so generous in hindsight that both Reid and Obama would probably have deeply regretted them if they'd been accepted.
- On cooperation, there was only deliberate and overt obstructionist behavior from most of the Republican senators and representatives, including the famous quote from McConnell, "Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term in office. But the fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won’t veto any of these things."
- On energy, republicans insisted on pipelines, oil, gas, and coal exploitation while simultaneously making fun of the administrations failures in alternative energy.  Hey, guess what assholes, if we never try we will never succeed at fixing this...come up with some ideas; mining every last drop of finite resources just to keep energy impossibly cheap another 25 years is NOT a long term plan.  On a side note, Obama was much more flexible in domestic energy exploration than anyone, particularly Republicans, give him credit for.  Jobs in that sector have recovered, not shrunk.  Traditional domestic energy production has increased...the much touted "attack on coal" really the result of how successful natural gas exploration has been . Cheapening natural gas and it's relatively cleaner energy has made coal (and coal energy) undesirable, not the administrations direct policies.   But I digress...

So, despite all this obstruction:
- the Obama administration passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  This is a super important (although incomplete) brick in the wall that may contain long-term health care costs.
- The Obama administration passed economic stimulus, the economy slowly improved, and housing markets (also fragile) seem to gradually be improving.  Are things great like they were 6-10 years ago?  Nope.  But they're better than they were during the crash/recession and they are steadily getting better.
- Part of this "bail out" that was fought tooth-and-nail by republicans supported the auto industry, saving GM, Chrysler and probably Ford too in a time none of them would have been able to secure conventional loans/financing.   Jobs at these companies (and their suppliers) were preserved; and two of the three makers have already repaid their dept to the government.  Whether you believe some industry is "too big to fail" or not, this particular government intervention worked as advertised.
- The Obama administration has attempted to place the true cost of unsustainable energy (oil, coal, and even natural gas) on the industry, and thus indirectly on the consumer.  This is hard on everyone, particularly short term.  But is it the ONLY way forward.  Whether 10 years or 100 years out, we cannot keep exponentially making more humans, using more energy, and creating more waste.  And destroying our own backyard to make our current usage feasible is incredibly short-sighted and self-destructive.  We MUST change, no matter how hard it is or how much it costs us now, or there won't be a later to worry about.
- The administration has stood behind their promise of controlled withdrawal from multiple foreign wars, virtually leaving Iraq and well on the way to leaving Afghanistan.
- Yet, the administration has found/arrested/killed a substantial number of high-level terrorist leaders, not the least of which was Osama Bin Laden.  Despite some very serious attempts, no major terrorist plots have succeeded on American soil.

That's a pretty good track record, particularly given the bitter political divide that's overshadowed every initiative the past four years.  Obama is a real politician, and plays both the long game and short game well.

Many right-leaning leaders fear our military and national security will be weakened if the current administration continues their roll-back of military deployment and spending.  But this ignores the reality: we just cannot afford to be constantly at war all around the world.  Over-spending is ultimately the biggest security threat.

Eight years of Bush/Cheney unilateral cowboy bullying, self-serving, and hawkish military deployment all over the world made an exponential number of enemies, ironically justifying ever-increasing military spending.  It is (and was) an unsustainable cycle - bravely broken by the Obama administration despite Republican apathy.   Long term, rolling back our world-wide military presence and cutting military spending may be among the most important and beneficial actions of the current administration.

We, as a country, really need to learn to play nice with the other kids in the sandbox.  It takes more than four years of real diplomacy to undo the damage the previous eight years of immature chest pounding did to our international position.  But there will be significant economic payoff in the future when we limit fighting everyone we disagree with and instead practice some actual compromise.   Or at least wait to be invited into other peoples fights.  There are times, places, and people that really do need their asses kicked, I won't deny that.  But the real economic and human cost of continuous war-after-war is much higher than the actual real threats against our national security.  For instance, the money we spend at war could, every month build a new Trade Center and send rockets to Mars, it could improve education and health care, rebuild and modernize the national transportation infrastructure, and it could develop real energy and population solutions for the future.   We spend a LOT of our money on unwelcome policing of other peoples parts of the planet...it just isn't possible to keep this up.

Essentially, fighting all over the world is the equivalent of setting most of our national "paycheck" on fire in the front yard instead of taking it to the bank.  We have lost 150% more soldiers fighting than men and women we lost in the terrorist attacks on 9/11, and in addition, by the most conservative estimates, have killed 20-30 times that number of the "enemy."  Why?  Do you feel safer today, as you face new (and increasingly expensive and invasive) draconian security measures each time you travel?  Do you feel safer knowing the terrorists have been training and improving their business against the best we have to offer, full-time, for 10 years?  I don't.  And, we aren't.

The planet if full of humans - overfilled, really.  We need to get along and work on long-term, sustainable solutions to very hard problems.  Mitt Romney's ideas about digging up and pissing all over our own part of the planet is not a long term solution.  Beating up on the rest of the world isn't either.

So...this morning, we move on to another four years of the Obama administration.  They have a lot of promises to live up to - no one would deny that.  And they have super-hard problems to solve.  But I think our country, and the world in general, is better off this morning.  We, as a country under the Obama administration, get to stay on a long tortuous path to sustainability - economically, militarily, and energetically.  There is no instant fix here, so even if you disagree with his methods, read what Obama said four years ago, listen to his speech from last night, and give the current administration and your country your best cooperative effort the next four years.

Pledge your allegiance to the United States of America, and to a nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  Together we stand,   'merica, baby!