Some folks are complaining that the presidency of Barak Hussein Obama is a failed presidency. I strongly disagree. Obama’s campaign slogan repeated ad nauseam was “Hope and Change”. His campaign promise was to “Significantly Transform America”.
Well we do need some significant change.
It is my opinion that he has succeeded in fulfilling his campaign promise more than any president in history, certainly beyond his wildest dreams.
So do you think Obama changed the country more than Abraham Lincoln who abolished slavery, FDR who greatly expanded the role of government in American life, and Lyndon B. Johnson who enacted civil rights legislation?
Of course he had some help, primarily Harry Reid, Senate Majority leader.
The same Senate majority leader who won't get just get rid of the procedural filibuster?
We live in a time when most of the "greatest generation" have already died and those remaining are quickly passing away. Sadly the nation for which this generation sacrificed so very much is also passing away, the consequence of the Obama presidency.
Funny you should mention the Greatest Generation. They indeed deserve the epithet of "Greatest" for sacrificing greatly and building a far stronger, prosperous, and better nation than the one they were born into. However, the question arises: for what did they sacrifice and what did they achieve as a result? The answer can broadly speaking be found in the two great ideas of President Franklin D. Roosevelt-the Four Freedoms and the Second Bill of Rights. Freedom of Worship. Freedom of Speech. Freedom From Fear. Freedom From Want. The right of every American to a decent job, shelter, health care, and security from poverty.
And despite the innumerable challenges, the Greatest Generation made great strides in achieving this promise both within the United States and throughout the world. They defeated the armies of Nazi Germany and fascist Japan, bleeding and dying in the North Africa sands, on the beaches of Normandy, the wintry woods of the Ardennes, and the tropical hells of Tarawa and Guadacanal. When the war ended, these veterans were determined to ensure the horrible events of the past would not be repeated. To ensure there would never again be the horrors of global warfare, the United Nations was created to foster international cooperation. When it became evident that the Soviet Union would prove another threat to free peoples, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created and containment strategy implemented to prevent the spread of this breed of authoritarianism. Meanwhile they returned home to build a broad-based middle-class society where no American would again experience the deprivation and destitution of the Great Depression. To achieve this they recognized that there would have to be a broad safety net and that the inevitable concentration of wealth and power in a small minority would not be conducive to the nation's well-being. As a result successive administrations of both Democratic and Republican Presidents would preside over the greatest economic boom in American history accompanied by the "Great Compression" where income inequality was vastly reduced from the extremely unequal conditions that prevailed in pre-Depression America and where working-class Americans would enjoy wages, benefits, and consumer goods that were unparalleled with many of these benefits having been won by the powerful and politically active labour unions. This was the great ideal: the "New Deal", the "Fair Deal", the "New Frontier", the "Great Society". On the governmental side, the implementation of this vision meant the implementation of programs that would provide a measure of stability and security for Americans: Social Security, the minimum wage, regulation of the banks, Medicare, Medicaid. Unfortunately despite the best efforts of several Presidents of both parties, the cornerstone of the American social market was not laid-namely universal health care.
Meanwhile the Greatest Generation also became aware of the fact that the ideals of the Declaration of Independence-that all men are created equal-and
de jure enshrined in the 13th through 15th Amendments to the Constitution had not been fulfilled in reality. For that reason, the Presidents and Congressmen elected by the men and women of that generation, and the judges whom these politicians appointed began to strike the blows for true equality. Starting with the banning of discrimination for federal contracts and the desegregation of the armed forces this would involve the desegregation of schools and other public facilities, the ending of discrimination by private businesses, and the enforcement of voting rights.
Having been largely exiled from the mainstream of American politics for a generation, certain arch-conservatives searched for an opening through which their ideas based on laissez-faire economics might become mainstream once more. They discovered such an opening in the resentment of many white Southerners at civil rights legislation and also saw that for several generations, reactionary politicians in the South had exploited white Southern fears of the black race to discourage the formation of a populist alliance that would dethrone the Southern oligarchy. Thus happened the implemenation of the Southern Strategy.
The first instance of this occurred in 1964, when Barry Goldwater who had been one of the few Senators to oppose the Civil Rights Act had become the Republican nominee for President. The states of the Deep South whose white voters had been overwhelmingly Democratic for a century went by equally large margins for Goldwater instead of their fellow Southerner Lyndon B. Johnson. However Johnson triumphed throughout the rest of the country, ensuing his victory. The perfection of this strategy would have to wait four years for the American Machiavelli, Richard Nixon. Using coded words of "law and order" and the "silent majority", Nixon triumphed over Hubert H. Humphrey. the last true New Deal Democrat and began the long dominance of the far right in American politics. Successive Republican administrations would perfect this strategy of appealing to white middle-class and working-class resentment as evidenced by Ronald Reagan's great electoral triumphs. One notes that Reagan called for "states' rights", campaigned alongside segregationist Democrat turned Republican Strom Thurmond, and even gave a speech on the above-mentioned topic at Philadelphia, Mississippi where three civil rights workers had been murdered. The Republicans were aided in this by growing concerns among many conservative Christians over the increasing looseness of morals and the legalization of abortion nationwide due to Roe v. Wade (incidentally this decision was welcomed by many evangelical Christians including W.A. Criswell of Dallas until the Catholic Church and Francis Schaeffer pushed back against this trend).
This does not excuse the Democrats in their role in the failure of the triumph of President Roosevelt's vision. After the 1968 defeat of Hubert H. Humphrey, New Leftist forces seized control of the Democratic Party ensuing the nomination of George McGovern in 1972. This triumph brought the current obsessive and myopic focus on a handful of controversial social issues such as abortion which would further alienate the white working-class elements of the party. The utter defeat of McGovern would in turn result in a rightward shift of the Democratic Party on economic issues resulting in the nomination of candidates such as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Meanwhile the right-wing became more and more entrenched in American politics under the Reagan administration. Taxes were cut to the benefit of wealthy Americans despite ballooning deficits as were social welfare spending. For the first in a generation, income inequality began to increase in the United States and would grow worse and worse over the next thirty years until now when this disparity is the greatest it has been in one hundred years and the worst in the industrialized world. Financial regulations were deregulated, with the Glass-Steagall act being repealed by a conservative Democratic President. The only bright spot was the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Communist bloc, ending the long struggle against that breed of totalitarianism.
