Paying The Piper-Part Four A-Does Obama Get It?

First, I hope the more partisan readers of whatever persuasion will read the ENTIRE article before getting too worked up. There will be two parts to this topic, this one is Four A, and since I'm a little slow, I've been having trouble coming up with a title for the second part, but I'm leaning to Four B. That's catchy.

Barack Obama came to the presidency with lots of good will from the American public. Race has been an ever present issue in this country from its very beginning, and many Americans seemed to believe, while many others hoped, that with Obama's entering the highest office in the land, this divisive issue would finally be put to rest and the country would move forward truly as "The UNITED States." Further, he was young, energetic, intelligent, charismatic, and could give a hell of a speech. He seemed to want to get along with the opposition party, among other high-minded ideals. With the country in economic peril the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Great Depression, with terrorists hatching endless plots to kill Americans and other "Westerners," with two ongoing wars that were never paid for, and with countries which previously looked favorably upon America seemingly frowning upon many of our policies, we needed a real stand-up leader to right the listing ship. Did we get that leader?

While he has only been in office less than two years, my gut feeling is, no. The President has seldom seemed to be "in charge" of getting the policies he seems to advocate. The "stimulus" plan, which was seen by many people as a means of halting the sliding economy, as well as bolstering confidence that would then turn the economy around and add jobs, was handed over to Congress to hammer out. While the President advocated the plan, he seemed detached. The bill that passed had spending strung out over a couple of years, lessening, in my opinion, its impact. In spite of figures touted by the White House on jobs created or "saved," it is nearly impossible, again in my opinion, to come up with accurate numbers for such, although I'm sure it has had an effect.

Then came the health care...ah...debate? Is that the right word? Maybe "ugly" would be better. Again though, the President announced he was "for" health care legislation that would insure more Americans, but he left it to Congress to come up with the details. That is pretty much leaving a lit match in charge of dynamite. And it blew up! My sense was, the President and his advisers never anticipated the reaction they got, even from Republicans. They were thrown back on their heels by what happened to members of Congress last summer in their home states or districts,* and while they finally got a bill passed, they really never recovered, even to this day. Further, the longer the "debate" dragged on, it sure looked like they would have accepted ANY legislation, just to say they got it, and that the terrible battle shown in the news every day would end. The public wanted the economy to be "priority number ONE," and while the President said that health care legislation was important to the economy, he was never able to convey just how it would do so. The legislation for such an undertaking was huge and complex, something he and other supporters could not fully explain to an at times "detached" and increasingly skeptical American public, let alone put into slogans or catch phrases to garner support. Opponents had no such problem; they called it "socialism," "fascism," "communism," "big government," and some things I can't print here. When they ran out of names to call it, they invented something to use against it, "death panels."** After about a year of what many Americans thought was time wasted, as the economy still needed tending, the bill passed, but at a terrible cost to the President and many members of Congress, especially Democrats. The President touted the new law, but it may yet prove to be a problem that could blow up, perhaps even on him (if he runs and wins a second term) or on a future president, as there are not many cost saving measures in this law, in my opinion. I hope I'm wrong. I could go on about some other things that have transpired, but you get the overall point. So now, what about Obama's performance? (A Word History is below the notes)

* Even some Republican members of Congress had difficulty, with Mike Castle of Delaware coming to mind. The overall situation in many of these meetings was NOT one of America's shining examples to the world, as speakers were shouted down, and even members of the audience were taunted, including a handicapped woman in a wheel chair. Hmm, let's see, I did question if "debate" was the right word.

** For those who have been living some place other than "Mother Earth," put simply, the alleged government "death panels" were supposed to decide who lived and who died among elderly Americans in need of expensive treatments in order to hold down health care costs. No matter that the President had recently lost his elderly grandmother, polls showed an alarming number of Americans believed it, although I do believe those numbers dropped somewhat a bit later, but still remained awfully high for a public that had loads of information to the contrary available to it. In just the last few months, a Republican congressman, I believe from North Carolina, whose name escapes me just now, publicly acknowledged that the "death panel" charge was phony, and that most Republican members of Congress knew it was phony.

WORD HISTORY:
Four-This numerical word apparently traces back to Indo European "kwetwor/kwetwer," which meant "four." I say "apparently," because the Old Germanic offshoot, "fetwor/petwor," is assumed to have been derived from the Indo European root. The Germanic form gave Anglo-Saxon (Old English) "feower," which then became "fower" (seemingly pronounced "foe-er") later on, before evolving to the modern form. The other Germanic languages have similar forms: German and Dutch have "vier" (pronounced similarly to our word "fear"), Norwegian and Danish have "fire" (not, I believe, pronounced like our word "fire," but rather like "fear-eh"), Swedish has "fyra," Icelandic has "fjórir."