I seriously don't know what to make of you, except that, perhaps, when you first started posting here, you played Devil's Advocate with such a degree of irony and finesse that it was both brilliant and, because of the medium of the written word, impossible to identify as such.
But I agree with not just what you're saying here but the abstract concepts behind the words. Stop creeping me out! :tongue:
Now on topic:
One of the Teabagging reactionaries' favorite boogie-men is "the career politician", yet when a true outsider, with decent administrative skills and a profoundly deep knowledge of the constitution comes up from "no where" and gets elected, they freak out in unison. He's an enigma only to those who have never read his books (and they weren't
biographies, they were
autobiographical memoirs) and/or never listened to what he said on the campaign trail.
His administration is perfectly illustrative of the cautious, consensus-driven decision-making he'd promised, albeit distorted when half of the Congress has declared that they'll never cooperate with him; that makes consensus-building an intense challenge if not an impossibility. Legislation needs negotiation and compromise, and there's little if anything like that in sight.
And only in some feverish nightmare could a bi-racial son raised by a single mom in relative poverty be labeled elitist. He is a walking example of the American Dream, where quite anybody, regardless of one's social status at birth, aspire to and capture the Presidency of the United States. If his detractors and those who doubt his legitimacy recognized how profoundly his bio reads like a highly improbable Horatio Alger story they'd slump away in shame. Instead they beat their chests with a pungent Nationalistic fervor or else cluck at what he's attempted to do but couldn't, because of obstructionists from both parties, as if he could wave a wand and make things happen.
He's by no means perfect. Among his greatest sins, to me, is not just the continuation but the further enhancement of the Imperial Presidency and the troubling continuation of extraordinary extradition of "enemy combatants" to black sites where torture continues to the same degree formerly reserved for
Abu Ghraib or Gitmo. His continued support for the so-called Patriot Act, and this latest bit which essentially suspends
habeas corpus of American citizens (snuck into the latest defense appropriations bill) alarms me enormously (as it should all Americans). Ultimately it will be found to be unconstitutional, most assuredly. DADT is history, but until Clinton's other signature piece of bigotry (DOMA) is finally rescinded, LGBT Americans remain second-class citizens. I remain deeply skeptical that the needed action toward its repeal will happen with the next five years should be win a second term, but who really knows? As of right now, Holder's not actively prosecuting it even as mixed-nationality couples are forcibly separated by the DHS.
But it would most certainly remain not just on the books but prosecuted with renewed vigor under a Republican presidency, should 2012 turn out to win. And I shudder to think of what would happen to the Supreme Court should such a calamity actually happen, given the current crop of GOP candidates and their hideously distorted Christianist agendas win out.