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Oh…What Could Have Been!
By Lafe Tollicer, Esq
Guest Column
Well. It is time to turn the porch light on and call it
a day. Time to call in the dog and the cat from outside and
settle them down for the night. Time to put your hair in
curlers (women only please) and find that soft pillow spot
and go off to dream land.
For all practical purposes, the presidency of Barack
Obama has ended.
I know…I know. He still has two more years to try to hurdle
the fence and to
scratch out a viable legacy, but, come on folks…the fat lady
is singing and it is a blues song.
The gloomy tune goes something like this: “If I hadda
known this was to happen I woulda stayed away..If I hadda
known this was to happen, I would have stayed away…If I
hadda known this was to happen I would have stayed away and
found another job for my payday.”
That’s the song that President Obama must be singing at
midnight when he finally realizes that he just goofed six
years of promise and the next two years will not be kind to
him.
Who would have thought that back in 2008 when the
junior senator from Illinois, who showed so much promise, at
least in his soaring rhetoric, would land with a thundering
dud six years later.
Undoubtedly, lengthy books and Ph.D. dissertations will
be written long after he and Michelle leave the White House
as to what happened to so much potential and promise.
Why didn’t the acts match the progressive
pronunciations of a man who seemingly could capture any
crowd and wow them with his intellectual acumen.
What potholes did he not see when he crisscrossed the
country delivering speech after speech that appealed to such
a large and broad-based coalition of voters hoping for
change and that he was the agent of change.
At what time did Barack Obama leave his transcript of
hope and governmental transparency and go off into uncharted
waters of being a passive president whose best days were on
the campaign trail and not in the White House.
I believe that historians will be unkind and brutal to
this president who for reasons known only to himself and his
wife, Michelle, chose a path of least resistance when he had
to fight the dragon of a belligerent Republican Congress.
And much less the hostile leadership of both John
Boehner and the recalcitrant Senate leader, Mitch McConnell,
and his host of yapping minions who were more than glad to
attack simply for the sake of attacking.
Where does one start to recite the missed opportunities
that President Obama had to excite the populace to demand
that Congress back off and back him up?
Why did this intellectual president believe that he
could act as a college professor and by dint of sheer
intellectual firepower, win over his critics and advance a
national policy that was progressive and fair to all?
When it was time to take his naysaying bullies by the
throat and chastise them, all we got was garden tea party
niceties instead of telling his critics to prove it or stand
down!
It almost seemed that President Obama had an acute
aversion to rolling up his sleeves (except in campaign photo
opps) and slugging it out with the Senate or the Congress.
It is as if he believed that if he just would look
presidential and smile his winsome smile, all would be well
in Camelot and he would win the day.
Sadly, that was not true. What is becoming true is that
Barack Obama was
literally over his head as being ready for the White House.
The immensity of its power and the power of its immensity
took his breath away and what he thought he could or would
in the White House quickly evaporated when he had to face
the heat and glare of intense scrutiny of the press and a
hostile Congress and Senate.
Was he caught off-guard by such bellicosity and venom
from his attackers?
Yes. He was both shocked and quieted by their relentless
attacks on his
person and his policies but yet the advisors around him,
including Valerie Jarrett, were equally flummoxed by the
constant political drivel that they had to fight off and
respond to, if at all possible.
No, my friend, Barack Obama was not a political fighter
who knew how to throw a combination left hook and uppercut.
He was not skilled in close hand to hand political combat.
He did not have the political background to throttle his
featherweight opponents…and they smelled it and went in for
the kill.
One cannot be president when one governs from the
shadows and from behind the drawn curtains. The political
circus that we have developed in this country requires a
president that is willing to both present a flower and also,
when needed, to at least show a dagger. Obama repeatedly
favored the flower.
A president can only govern from his personality but
should have the intuition to gather around him players who
can fill in for his faults and not those who will only
accentuate them.
Now that the Senate and the Congress have won the
midterm elections, Barack Obama is going to have a sad and
lonely two more years before his political nightmare ends
with he and Michelle gladly leaving town to recuperate in
Chicago.
How sad and how sadder it is to know what could have
been with this first black president will never be repeated
again. If only Barack Obama was not willing to play the
tragic Shakespearean Othello in the greatest play of his
life.
Years from now when the tally is still being taken as
to what could have been accomplished with Barack Obama’s
presidency, one of the more lucid and enduring statements
will be, “Oh, what could have been!”
President Obama, “Why oh why did you not first put on your
big boy pants and
go out on the playground and take it to the hoop!?”
Who wants to read your memoirs and you bemoan what
happened to you and what you would have done differently.
You have two years to seek redemption. Quit the GQ
styling and start flaring your nostrils and take the White
House and not let the White House take you.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at Tolliver@Juno.com |
