Down and Out

You know, President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress really affected me. I had so few expectations of anything useful coming out of it that when our president fell below even that low bar with his partisan, campaign speech, I just gave up on him. I changed the channel. I couldn't bear to listen to any more.

President Clinton poached from the right and rode it to reelection. Even that miserable excuse for a man, President Carter, saw reality when it hit him with a two by four across the back of the head, and he began a defense build up after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But President Obama? He's lashed himself to the mast in this Viking funeral ride to European style social democracy (excuse the mixed imagery--they both seem appropriate) and nothing but electoral defeat will stop him.

It was profoundly disillusioning to come to this conclusion. I never thought he deserved the office. But he won it. And for the good of our country, I hoped for the best. I even hoped for his reelection on the theory that if he can win reelection, things must be going good enough. Now all I think we can do is endure him for another year and a half (or perhaps 5-1/2 years, since you never know) and pick up the pieces when he move on.

So while I have felt more free this last year to hit non-security issues related to President Obama, I think I'll leave that to the ample talents of the rest of the blogosphere. Our economic health is such a necessary base for our national security that it seemed OK to comment on it on occasion. But you have my views on it, for what they're worth. I won't bounce the rubble.

I'm going to stick to my older subjects and hopefully cut down on the "Landfill" category that included complaints about the president. Foreign and defense policies are fair game, of course. And the bias of the media and discomfort of his disillusioned supporters will always be in season. But I'm going to try very hard to avoid becoming a campaign blog as the 2012 election season approaches.

I'm just too tired of this presidency to expend the blog energy on complaining. No màs.

UPDATE: Was I too hasty to write off the president? Is he actually trying to change course on the budget despite the heavy-handed political spin of his speech?

Or am I just too ready to hope for the best--and real change--at long last?

UPDATE: Never mind. Of course, I'm not losing hope that President Obama will do what he said he'd do. I'm losing hope that he'll stop trying to do what he said he'd do. Still, the loss of hope is the same, right?