Four is enough?

My Mom used to always ask "why would anyone want to be President in the first place? All anyone does is bitch about how bad they are, they take such criticism from all sides." In part I completely agree, but the question had to be at least partially rhetorical. Being the most powerful person on Earth has to be worth enduring a little yapping from mere mortals. The Roman Emperor Vaspasian responded to criticism by saying "I do not concern myself with the barking of dogs." He was one of the few though, and was rewarded by posterity for his tolerance by having the Italian word for urinal named for him. Most emperors had critics murdered in severe and interesting ways however. Have to wonder if sometimes, even just a bit, President Obama longs for some of this old-time religion. Fantasizing about feeding rush limbaugh to ravenous wild boars or flaying john boehner's perpetual tan off with a scalpel  may be fun but not the subject of this post.

What concerns us here is whether the speculation here means that President Obama is cool with losing, or is considering calling off his reelection campaign altogether. That is troubling about an historian looking at current events, we're used to having all the facts in and then piecing together interpretation, motivation, and meaning. Here, not all the facts are in. Of course, there is enough concrete evidence that Barack Obama is not the president we need, and I mean America in the most generic sense, not simply liberals like me. Don't get me wrong I think he will make a alright ex-president, just like Jimmy Carter did more after he left the White House for the good of mankind than was possible while he was president. If there was position of honorary American Monarch, Barack Obama would be ideal because he is a unifying force for the sensible portion of the American population. I also know there are many who would disagree about Carter, but I'm talking to the grownups right now.

To begin, almost all of the problems Americans face today are the result of human decisions. Bad ones, but also decisions made by insidious predators knowing exactly how much harm they would have. The situation is practically unprecedented in human history, to my knowledge there has never been such a disciplined group of tyrants so bent on fulfilling the vile maxim "all for ourselves and nothing for anyone else." Even Hitler had Ernst Rohm and his supporters murdered when they became a liability to the totalitarian dream. Perhaps the communist party of the USSR, but the only example that comes to mind is Krushchev, but he only repudiated Stalin's madness after he was dead. Just as our totalitarian republicans disown guys like dubya, jack abramoff, and others once they are no longer furthering the cause of the predator state. The right words and concepts for what the radical right has done to this country really elude me. When I say that the corporatists are disciplined and unified I mean that there always seem to be enough places at the elite table for them not to knock each other off. The rest of us, well, social darwinism and propagandist scapegoating sure has eliminated any pressure on them. I've often wondered if there is something bigger and badder than this unified fascist movement, or if there is some way to cause division between them that could ignite real competition on the right.

Which gets us back to the question, let me put it another way. What is Barack Obama's purpose as Chief Executive of the United States? I've read an awful lot about American politics these days as "kabuki theater" all the decisions were made behind closed doors and all the vitriol from the right and capitulation on the left is simply staged for that minority of the population actually paying attention. If this is so, why do we bother? If big business really does have us all by the throat and it is all for show, why the theatrics? Why not just declare an autocracy and be done with it? There isn't enough energy left in even the engaged population to stage any kind of uprising, for all our work in Madison, what did it accomplish? So is Obama's purpose just a kind of judas goat or sacrifice? Pretending to pretend to clean up dubya's mess and setting us up for another mad dog republican president? Doing the business of big finance while the rest of us slide into the third world?

Every initiative seems an unneccessary compromise of half a loaf dreamed up by out-of-touch consultants to begin with. What compensation could exist to be such a punching bag for these vicious bullies, just utterly shameless liars. If the Obama vs. gop kabuki theater is real, I have a hard time imagining what kind of creature could both do their bidding and suffer the emasculating slings and arrows thrown at him. Even dubya seemed to care about his legacy at the end, maybe he "wrote" that book just for the royalties. If Barack Obama cared about his country, he would stand aside and let another Democrat run next year.

It isn't out of the realm of possibilities, for all the good of the Great Society LBJ stood aside when he realized he was wrong about Vietnam. Coolidge declined to run for reelection in 1928, he arguably set up the conditions for the Great Depression more than anything Hoover did. I may have put down the Madison protestors against Fitzwalkerstan but there was a lot there, energy, organizing, and even money in spite of everything that has happened (unemployment, $4 gas, foreclosures, and vicious counterprotests from braindead teabagger stooges) and a lot of new info on the the fascists was uncovered (koch bros and ALEC or whatever). A fraction of that kind of grassroots energy coalesed around a real Democrat like say, Russ Feingold could really challenge the status quo. A man can dream can't he?