Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Grandchildren Moon<\/p>\n
The Colorado Teacher’s union says Obama has lost his luster.\u00a0 Jen, union rep for her school, said so last night over sushi.\u00a0 That would be a good generalization for the country as a whole.\u00a0 Obama has lost his luster.\u00a0 Let me tell you why that’s a good thing.<\/p>\n
Part of Obama’s luster was his election as our first president of color.\u00a0 Though his election represented a break through, it represented a break through not for Barack Obama but for the United States itself.\u00a0 In the end Obama happened to be a person of presidential ambitions who was of color.\u00a0 The quest for power has never known a color barrier, just access to power in certain places and certain eras.\u00a0 The Mongols wanted power in China, so they conquered China and created the Yuan dynasty.\u00a0 Likewise, the Manchus, an artificial amalgam of northerners, wanted in power in China, conquered the Ming dynasty and created their own, Qing dynasty.\u00a0 Patrice Lumumba.\u00a0 Ida Amin.\u00a0 Kwame Nkrumah.\u00a0 Nelson Mandela.\u00a0 Felipe Calderon.\u00a0 Pol Pot.<\/p>\n
Part of Obama’s luster came from the dismal, even embarrassing governance of his predecessor, G.W. Bush, just your good ole boy in the oval office.\u00a0 Obama would bring in the non-Dick Cheney’s, the anti-Rumsfelds.\u00a0 This again has nothing to do with Obama himself, rather it relates to the person he replaced.\u00a0 Again, from this perspective, anyone would do.<\/p>\n
Part of Obama’s luster came from his victory in a long and hard fought primary battle, a battle that included the first viable female candidate for the Presidency, Hillary Clinton, and that stretched on well into the year of the Presidential election itself.\u00a0 Though this begins to get to his character, he can tough it out over the long haul, confronting risks head-on, it is still nothing unusual.\u00a0 Presidential candidates have to first win the confidence of their own party before they can have a shot at convincing the whole country.<\/p>\n
Part of his luster, too, comes from a glamorous wife and two beautiful daughters.\u00a0 This, too, begins to speak to his character, but we expect our Presidents to have families, so it’s not unusual in any particular way.<\/p>\n
Luster fades, the Oscar becomes burnished as does the Olympic medal.\u00a0 The carefully orchestrated rise of celebrity lasts for only moments in most peoples lives.\u00a0 The rush of romance must give way to a longer, more sturdy and hardy love.\u00a0 The lilies in my garden send up their three-foot stalks, dazzle me with their colors and fragrance, then quickly the flowers disappear.\u00a0 But.\u00a0 The lily remains.\u00a0 It takes in food, stores it in the bulb, throws off more plants through expansion of the bulb, bulbils that grow on the stalk and even occasionally from seed.<\/p>\n
This is why Obama’s loss of luster is a good thing.\u00a0 Now he has a chance to send down stores of wisdom and experience gained in office to his staffers, his cabinet, his party.\u00a0 Now he can begin to govern as Barack Obama, the man who would govern as a center-left president, not as Barack Obama, conqueror of Hillary, nor as the first black man to be President, not as the anti-Bush and not with the reflected glamor of wife and daughters.\u00a0 Is he in a more difficult situation now?\u00a0 Yes.\u00a0 He has spent political capital at an exorbitant rate to pass the health care reform legislation, to get more bail out money, to push home some re-regulation of the financial services industry and in an attempt to pass energy legislation.<\/p>\n
His party faces a difficult election round\u00a0 thanks to the fractious politics of all the things mentioned here and the unsteady economy and the legacy wars, especially the one in Afghanistan he has made his own.\u00a0 And yet.\u00a0 This is the time the man can break out from behind the self-preening of those of us who elected him in part as a black man.\u00a0 This is the time the man can break out from comparisons to G.W. Bush, flattering or otherwise, and create the reality of his governance style.\u00a0 This, more than any other, is Barack Obama’s time.\u00a0 I for one wish him well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waxing Grandchildren Moon The Colorado Teacher’s union says Obama has lost his luster.\u00a0 Jen, union rep for her school, said so last night over sushi.\u00a0 That would be a good generalization for the country as a whole.\u00a0 Obama has lost his luster.\u00a0 Let me tell you why that’s a good thing. Part of Obama’s … Continue reading Obama Loses His Luster. Why That’s A Good Thing.<\/span>