I worry about democracy

As much as I have always been excited about Barack Obama breaking through the skin color constraints and becoming President and getting re-elected, I have always criticized him for the weak executive that I believe that he was in the Oval Office. 

Unlike many of the left-leaning colleagues and friends, I dd not support Obama's candidacy in 2008.  I was cheering for Hillary Clinton.  People may have forgotten how close the contest was in the Democratic primaries.  Look it up on Wikipedia and you will be shocked if you have forgotten.

To me, Obama was Slick Willie without the sex.  As I wrote in this post in July 2009, "Of course, I will gladly take a Slick Willie without sex over the muddler from Midland, or the phoenix that is older than the pyramids. But, hey, Obama is slickness as we have never seen before."  I almost threw up when he told a large crowd of adoring fans "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

Obama never came across as one using his charisma in order to bend Congress according to his wishes like Reagan.  Obama did not wheel and deal with Republicans as Clinton did even into the late hours of the night.  Of course, Obama was nowhere the presidential bully that LBJ was. 

The rhetorical genius was no executive.

One of the many disappointments and frustrations that the Oval Office Obama put me through was after Russia invaded and took over Crimea.  He did not immediately team up with Germany and the rest of the European Union and punish Putin and Russia for the illegal grab of Crimea.  Irrespective of the historical reasons that Russia had, we were living in a post-World War II world of united nations in which we do not change political borders by force, and yet the leader of the free world merely talked and did not act.

I worried about the Russian invasion so much that I wrote in a Thanksgiving column for the local newspaper: 

The big European story is, of course, about how Russia swallowed up the Crimean Peninsula. One day Crimea was a part of Ukraine, and the next day it became a Russian territory. Russia is not done with gobbling up Ukraine’s land, with more military incursions expected.

It was so obvious to me, living in a small town far, far away from Ukraine and Washington, DC, that Russia and Putin were not done with Ukraine.  Obama, as always, chose to lead from behind!

In the 2012 re-election campaign, Obama used his rhetoric to make fun of Mitt Romney's concern that Russia was a serious threat to America and the world.  If only Obama had understood and acknowledged the threat that Putin's Russia was!

Ten years after the presidential elections in 2012, Obama is as popular as he was, and is now campaigning in states that will determine the fate of Democrats' control of Congress.  Voters have made it clear that they do not care about Ukraine and Putin, and the price of gas is apparently what matters to most voters. 

Meanwhile, President Biden has managed to get a lot done legislatively by quietly, methodically, and patiently working with Congress, especially with the conservative Democratic senators from Arizona and West Virginia, and is correctly pitching this election as a fight for democracy--within the country and in the world.  He lacks the gift of rhetoric that Obama has, and certainly does not ooze with charisma.  I worry that the man who has gotten things done will be punished by voters on Tuesday, and the incoming Republicans will do all they can to weaken his determined effort to fight for democracy and against Putin.

Thanks, Obama!