The Age of Obama: The year 6 AO

The first candidate to openly declare a bid for the Presidency of the United States of America in the 2016 election is reportedly prepared to declare his candidacy and is buying a whopping ad slot to do so. This candidate is an African-American and is also a conservative Republican. Before one dismisses Obama as irrelevant it is useful to look at signs like that the Lame Duck has made changes he will doubtless fell proud of and this post does not deny such things.

We all have images of what leadership should look like which are not simple portrayals of reality.

This is a time to take stock of what I have said about the direction of the country under Obama.  It seems that President Barack Hussein Obama has a great deal to say about staying the course, he does not seem to admit that a major course correction is in order.  I have posted about these midterms here, here and here. I posted about the previous Obama midterm here, here and here. I am clearly no Obama supporter but I have not been clamoring for impeachment. Even today Obama opponents picking such a fight might end up giving him the only fight Obama could still really win in US politics. But He is a realistic target for impeachment for the first time. I will return to that idea in later posts if the process starts. But I bring it up because there is a storm brewing. My own life is full of storms and disappointments. We have no way to measure such things relatively. For me Obama has meant that years of unpaid work on Space colonization has been put further on a back burner. For others he has meant the change of race relations for the worse at work. But those are not impeachable offenses.  Some of us will be looking around to see what can be restored and rebuilt.

Policies come and go but we all see the heavens and can dream and see visions.

Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both presidents during our country’s greatest crisis. Neither served as long as Barack Hussein Obama has served in this our nation’s highest public office. Lincoln was assassinated shortly after being reelected and only a month after the first anniversary of his inauguration.   Jefferson Davis was out of office long before six years had been counted in the Confederate States of America,  inaugurated two months before Lincoln he dissolved his cabinet and the Confederate government in Georgia a month after Lincoln’s assassination and was captured by Union forces and gave a final surrender of executive documents on June 15, 1865 .  Only a few people would believe that Obama is in real danger of seeing his presidency become an equally tragic one to those of Davis and Lincoln. Has he failed in a policy that really created ISIS? Has he let Ebola find its feet? Has the AHCA (Obamacare) further ruined the American dream of a good forty hour a week job for most Americans? Has acrimony gotten much worse in Washington? Did he and his people lie about Benghazi? A Republican majority in Congress can look intently at all these problems for answers.

The country may be divided but all out war is very unlikely. We have already done that once. We have real problems to resolve but the right national goals could resolve most of them if properly presented.  But I am less sure of where Obama is coming from than I am about where Davis or Lincoln were coming from.  The crises Jefferson Davis faced as Secretary of War for the United States of America was a long-developing crisis which came to a head and brought him into an office that had not existed before.  Lincoln faced the stern truth of secession from the start. America was a minor player in the worldwide balance of power and it was easy to let internal affairs take precedence over the challenges faced in the world. Obama’s presidency is like that of Nixon, Clinton, Harding, Buchanan and others deeply troubled.  The country has serious problems at home and abroad but none that focus the mind like a Civil War would. The truth is that many of us who are very different from one another feel insecure. However, is President Obama going to find himself the victim of the whirlwind he and others have sown?  The old saying goes “sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” but our political weather may well be sow the whirlwind and reap the super-storm. The conflict does not seem to be abating.

Things have changed since President Obama was elected. One can look at Obama’s biographies and analyses of what his presidency meant   a few years ago and see that the climate in the nation’s politics has been through several changes since these books were written.  We will face a period of sorting through the significance of these midterm elections and we will have the runoff between Landrieu and Cassidy. However, it is conceivable that gathering dark clouds will limit the Landrieu campaign to something less than expected.

It seems likely that Republicans will take Alaska and extend their majority in the Senate but come up with less than 60 seats for certain. It seems likely that Democrats will hold Warner’s seat in the Senate as Senator from Virginia. The next two years could be bloody and an impeachment may be what both Obama and the TEA Party would most readily understand as an outcome. It may even be the right thing for the country.   I am not a Republican. I worry about the direction of the country with or without Obama. But the future  must be made and his tone has left Republicans with plenty of feelings from which to seek out “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” in his record. If things are going to be messy and slow anyway why not focus them on impeachment? I do not think that things will start there. Republicans are not clamoring for it yet. But we could end up there sooner or later over the next two years.

To safeguard liberty we must be able to adapt to the changing times.

America wants to deal with its business and if the President cannot make that happen there may be a reluctant acceptance of the impeachment of this President. The best chance of averting that outcome is in his hands. I am not sure he wishes to avert it. For me the future is not much about impeachment. I am not so unusual that Republicans could not relate to other things about Obama’s vision that never mention impeachment which I have posted which are rather harsh visions of his office.  I have not clamored for his impeachment although I opposed him early on and ever since on most things or in much of his tone at least.

What about the big hopes of good reporting on weapons of Mass Destruction used in Iraq? What about Space Colonization? What about a better monetary standard? What about patent reform? Those things may not affect impeachment nor be affected by it but the political winds do not blow away conservative visions of the  better future the President’s political opponents might wish for and they will see if he can cooperate whether they are really GOP fans or not. America is a complex place. We still hope our own hopes.

Some still see a future with homes on the Moon and Mars.