An open letter to President Obama

Dear President Obama:

Thank you for running our country; it’s a big job, I can’t imagine the toll it takes on a person, and I appreciate that you’re willing to do it. That being said, I have some thoughts on your presidency.

I grew up in a household with a liberal/Reagan-Democrat mother and Republican/farmer father. As the Cold War ended, my father began shifting to a more moderate point of view. I remember them supporting Ross Perot briefly, because he was different and they liked a politician who spoke candidly; Bill Clinton was their second choice that year for the same reasons. I spent my high school years living in a world where America was awesome and so was our economy.

As a college freshman in 2000, I was decidedly, blissfully uninformed on national policy issues. I voted for George W. Bush because he seemed more personable than Al Gore (I was valedictorian of my high school class, so that doesn’t say much for the state of civics education in our nation). My naïveté ended abruptly on September 11, 2001. My dad called me and woke me up. I turned on my tiny dorm-sized television and watched as the Twin Towers crumbled to the ground. My college roommates regarded me as the resident political expert. They asked questions like, “Why did this happen?” and “Who would want to hurt us?” I spent the rest of the week huddled in the campus library learning about Osama bin Laden and America’s foreign policy decisions of the previous three decades. My major changed from biology to three others instead: history, philosophy with a concentration in religious studies, and social studies education. Patriotism led me to support the invasion of Afghanistan, and that patriotism began to wane as the White House shifted its focus to Iraq. I couldn’t believe how many people thought Iraq had been part of 9/11. I can’t believe how many Americans still think that. Needless to say, my vote in 2004 stood in stark contrast to my vote four years earlier.

When George W. Bush won his reelection bid, I was so disappointed with my country. The blatant catering to corporate interests, the self-serving intel and unwillingness to listen that led to the wrongful invasion of Iraq, and the conservative social policies that violated many Americans’ basic rights didn’t seem to phase people. The message that Americans were unpatriotic if they didn’t support the war or President Bush had been beaten into people’s minds to the point that many believed it. It made me really sad, because our patriotism was being used against us by our own President. Unfortunately for those Americans who don’t directly profit from the military-industrial complex, Karl Rove is a genius. He put anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot in states he thought Bush was in danger of losing, playing on people’s religious beliefs to undermine an election. He masterminded a political environment in which questioning or opposing American foreign policy was blasphemy and fear of shadowy figures in the Middle East was used to justify absurd overreaches of power, all the while selling out America’s best interests to the highest bidder.

I regarded the 2008 campaign with apprehension. I didn’t know if I could take another swift-boating. Sen. McCain seems like a good man, and I felt sad watching the right hijack his floundering campaign, force Gov. Palin onto his ticket, and make him parrot a negative, sarcastic message that undermined everything he'd ever stood for. In contrast, your campaign united people. It mobilized people. It made people feel like things might be okay. In November 2008, I voted for you with all my heart. I wanted the hope and change you promised more than I’d ever wanted anything.

You came into office in early 2009 to a country that barely even resembled the one in which I came of age just nine years earlier. By that time I was in my third year as a high school social studies teacher, pounding the rights, responsibilities, and obligations of the electorate into the brains of juniors and seniors. As the nation sank lower and lower into the financial crisis, I maintained my optimism because you were at the helm. I thought of you as an attack dog of progressivism, ready to expose corporate misdeeds, close Gitmo, and begin investing in our nation’s social, educational, and environmental future. I’m still waiting, Mr. President.

We elected you to do the right thing, not to maintain the very un-equitable status quo. As the days went by, Gitmo stayed open. You began using phrases that scared me, like “too big too fail.” I watched my tax dollars bail out the mistakes of unethical unregulated Wall Street banks, and saw less and less funding for the school in which I worked. As the health care bill began to take shape, I felt very uneasy about the insurance companies having such a heavy hand in the planning; didn’t we all go into this knowing that a single-payer system was the goal? I don’t mean to downplay the successes of your administration. You have accomplished a great deal in your two years as President. But you had a mandate to kick ass, and then you didn’t. The electorate handed you the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House on a platter, and then you shared it with the corporate interests we so strongly opposed in the first place. Your “shellacking” in the Nov. 2010 election didn’t happen because you were too far to the left; it happened because you were too far to the right. The hope and change that 66,882,230 people wanted in 2008 was far too watered down to be palatable in 2010. Your administration seems to be a testament to the business-as-usual style of government. What happened?

Have you ever seen the Michael Douglas movie The American President? You should Netflix it. The main character is the president, and he spends most of the movie ignoring the rhetoric of his GOP-opponent; he says, “I’m not going to swing at a pitch in the dirt. Nobody wins these fights.” His decision to stay mum has a negative effect on his ratings and domestic policy. In the film’s uplifting, heart-soaring crescendo, the president faces the camera and gives the speech of a lifetime, refusing to apologize for his progressive agenda and winning the back the heart of the nation in the process. This is the moment your supporters are waiting for. I know that the Democrats aren’t nearly the politicians that Republicans are (can we seriously not find a Karl Rove of our own?), but I don’t think it takes a political savant to see that this is the moment where you have to stand up and fight.

The Republican agenda benefits the top 5% of Americans, and that’s about it. It’s a big corporate cake with pro-life frosting and pro-gun sprinkles. Those wedge issues protect thinly-veiled anti-American policies that hurt our nation, our citizens, and our future for corporate gain. The GOP doesn’t support education for all, basic civil and human rights, or the environment, and this is a message that wins elections?! Your attempts at compromise have been heartening in light of the polarized state of our political climate, but sometimes you just should not compromise. When the Republicans hold unemployment insurance hostage in exchange for tax cuts for the rich, get loud about it. Look into the camera, and tell the American people the truth. And while you’re at it, call out the Republican governors that are currently attempting to undo decades of progressive legislation in Wisconsin, New Jersey, Indiana, etc. I appreciate your hesitation about getting involved in state politics, but this is a national attempt to silence millions of people and give corporations even more control over society. When the Republicans took office in January, they had a plan. They have spent the last few weeks unrolling those plans in unison across the nation. I originally thought that low-level Republicans were in on the scam, but my many emails with my state representatives has shown me that they really thought they were doing the right thing. They didn’t know that Gov. Walker had an inappropriate relationship with Koch Industries. They didn’t know that the budget would slaughter local economies and benefit corporations. They didn’t know that anti-family planning legislation would also be accompanied by massive cuts to Medicaid and child welfare. They bought into the idea that limited government was by definition good government; after three decades of GOP propaganda, even good-hearted educated politicians have bought the message.

We need a revolution. Get the voters back. If the GOP only represents 5% of the population, then the other 95% are up for grabs. Nixon’s Southern Strategy was largely based on racism, but the concept of showing people that they are voting for a party that does not have their best interests at heart still applies. The Tea Party in Wisconsin doesn’t want big government, they have been made to believe that Gov. Walker has their best interests at heart, and they don’t realize that every voice supporting Gov. Walker is funded by the Koch brothers – Americans for Prosperity, the Republican Governors Association, Koch Industries PAC, the Cato Institute, StandwithScottWalker.org., Citizens for a Sound Economy. Every single one is funded by Charles and David Koch. Many Americans do not hear this information because they are busy watching Fox News’ coverage of Wisconsin’s palm trees. This is unfolding in many states right now. You need to call attention to it and stop it before it is too late. If Walker and other corporate-sponsored politicians destroy unions and enact voter ID laws that will disenfranchise thousands, how will the working and middle-class fight against corporate interests? The Republicans need corporate support to win elections; you don’t. Please keep that in mind when you’re making deals that undermine the hope and change we were promised. I’ve read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They contain phrases such as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “promote the general welfare,” “secure the blessings of liberty”, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” etc. They don’t say anything about government existing to protect the bottom line of corporations, allowing corporations to fund independent political broadcasts in candidate elections, or making college tuition out of the reach of the working class. Stop apologizing for progressive policies. It’s the core of who we are as a nation.

Put together an awesome website of sources for people who want to check the data for themselves, and then put together an awesome speech that calls out the GOP agenda for what it is. Show a graph of the distribution of wealth in America and how it’s gotten so much worse in the last few decades. Explain the fact that the trickle-down Reaganomics theory was debunked years ago, and that it doesn’t benefit anyone other than the wealthy. Ask Americans to take a look around and see how they’ve fared in an increasingly-deregulated economy. Ask them why they accept the rhetoric against green technology fed to them by the fossil fuel energy conglomerates. Ask them why we dump billions of dollars into high-tech weapons systems when we’re fighting basic guerrilla warfare in the streets and hills of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ask them why so little of the meat we buy at the grocery store gets the special label indicating that the animal was humanely-raised. Ask them why they so readily approve of allowing profit-driven insurance companies to decide what life-saving treatments people get but when the government would be in that role they call it a "death panel." Ask them why they tolerate grassroots movements funded by the second-largest private corporation in the country. Ask them why they support politicians who oppose abortion, family planning services, and sex education, yet do nothing to assist in the care of those uplanned children once they're born. Ask them why they are supporting bills that strip away basic workers’ rights and social services to maintain tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans and corporations. Ask these questions, and demand answers. What’s the worst that can happen – you’ll be a run-of-the-mill one-term president? I worry that will be your fate if you don’t give the speech. Fight for us. And then we’ll fight for you.

I conclude with a quote from Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

Sincerely,
Miss Lippy