He Is Who I Thought He Was

At the end of his first year in office, the country is in a storm. It really did not matter who we elected as President, that storm was coming. It is born of the economic insecurity and all the hundred million reasons that people have to not trust government to come to their personal aid or represent their interests. That segment of our population who figure that they were ordained by God to rule have set upon this president with a special vengeance. Is it because he is black? I think so.

But, he is who I thought he was when I voted for him and encouraged others to do the same. I have run my own business for over 30 years and I understand that there is a big difference between actually creating a good product and creating satisfied customers, and talking about what I would do if I did run my own business. I also taught mathematics for 11 years and while Barack Obama was a law professor, law, like mathematics, requires a high degree of mental discipline. I knew that if I could read the evaluations of his students, then I would know the man. Those students said that above all, he was practical.

The din of pure bull coming from the right about Barack Obama reverberated upon itself and took many a person to a level of total hysteria about him and his coming presidency. In the midst of that din, there was nothing of logic and truth that could get through, and many of the people participating are still walking around unable to hear and see what is right before them. Every action coming from President Obama is twisted to fit the prophecy of that din, and thus we have a large portion of our population who will never know the man, and that is a shame.

Barack Obama was a novice to politics compared to many who had come before him. He was going to have some monster stumbles, but through it all, unlike George W. Bush, he was and is capable of learning and adjusting. George Bush came in absolutely confident that his narrow way was right, and beyond any need for adjustment. He never adjusted to any realities and he led this country into several of the worst situations that we have found ourselves over the last century.

And to what is it that Barack Obama will adjust? The teacher's mind will direct him along a path to an answer that is both possible and reasonable. It may never lead to the kind of absolute rightness that George Bush always enjoyed, inside his mind, but it will lead to the best answer possible under existing circumstances. That is what we need in this country today, a realization that we can improve our corporate lives by finding solutions to problems that take us to at least a little higher on the hill than we are today, even if they never take us to the top. We need to start improving our lives by increments and a practical person will settle for a better tomorrow, even if it is not perfect.

It may well be that big improvements in the health care and health insurance situations are not possible politically. If that is the case, watch as President Obama finds out what he can get and goes with that. We have already seen that, and we have seen the Democrats abuse their mandate by filling the bill with every kind of pork that they needed to buy out all the effected parties. Now, Congress must find itself and the will to go back to the drawing board to construct something that both incrementally improves the current situations and and is not filled with billions of dollars of give aways to Senators who would abuse their situations.

After George Bush, I just wanted a president who was willing to listen, learn, and work on incrementally getting us back to where we need to be as a country. Barack Obama has filled that bill very well. He is who I thought he was and I like that.