...And then I close the book. Cutting to the present is a rude awakening, like snapping out of a dream. Its hard to remember those days of optimism -- they seem a distant memory, a sad reminder of opportunities gone by. Change indeed happened, in the years since I cast my first ballot. It was simply nothing I could have imagined. I credit Obama with great and varied accomplishments, from the passage of the Affordable Care Act to our military exit from Iraq, the end of dont ask dont tell, to the killing of Osama bin Laden. Moreover, I believe that partisan obstructionism has upended too many efforts to push our nation forward: immigration reform, a public option for health care, and closing the base at Guantanamo Bay, among others. But, after the countless times in which I have found myself defending the Obama administration to colleagues and peers, Ive reached a limit to the explanations that I can provide. Ive reached a point of political despair. Republican obstructionism cannot explain allowing the bugging of foreign leaders, nor having drones strike innocent children overseas. It cannot explain having the National Security Agency collect data on the private lives of Americans, nor prosecuting whistle-blowers who reveal government wrongdoing. It cannot account for assassinating Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, without a trial, nor shirking public funding and spending limits during presidential campaigns. It cannot justify the findings of a report that says the White Houses efforts to silence the media are the most aggressive ... since the Nixon Administration. And, most recently, it cannot excuse the failure to design a simple website more than three years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law. I dont know if this is what I should have expected. If, at 18 years old, I was supposed to figure out that governance may contradict the political campaigns that precede it. Obviously, elective office isnt a predictable course, as the opposing political party and random events, such as the Newtown massacre, will shape our public conversation. Yet, of all of the examples that I have listed above, they largely seem to be of the administrations own choosing. That is what troubles me most of all. I voted for Obama again in 2012, but not because I was excited by his candidacy. Mitt Romney presented a confusing and unrefined alternative who could not seem to lock down his policies or his positions. I felt that a second term for Obama, free from the pressures of future elections, would fulfill the hope that we had heard of for so long... cnn/2013/11/01/opinion/morris-obama-voter-despair/index.html?hpt=hp_t4
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 20:59:02 +0000
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