Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America
By Frank Schaeffer
Before he'd been in office one year President Obama lost the support of the
easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled
right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds --
including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing
agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a
famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter -- are sticking with
our President.
Why? Because he's shown he will succeed by slow, calm and steady...staying
the course.
We faithful Obama supporters still trust our initial impression of him as a
great, good and uniquely qualified leader.
Obama's loyal supporters will be proven right. Obama's critics will be
remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and
shriveled hate mongers at worst.
The Context of the Obama Presidency:
Not since the rise of fascism in Europe , the Second
World War and the Depression has any president faced more
adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly
divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any
president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant
opposition -- from both the right and left.
As the President's poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on
the left who hailed him as a Messiah not long ago; those lefty web sites and
commentators that were falling over themselves on behalf of our first black
president during the 2008 election.
The left's lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling "prophecy"-- snipe at
the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you
didn't have anything to do with it!
Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:
# An ideologically divided country, to the point America is really two
countries
# Two wars; one mishandled from the start, the other unnecessary and immoral
# The worst economic crisis since the depression
# America 's standing in the world at its lowest point in history
# A country misled into accepting the use of torture on prisoners of war
# A health care system in free fall
# An educational system in free fall
# A global environmental crisis of history-altering proportions (about which
the Bush/Cheney administration and Republicans had done nothing)
# An impasse between culture warriors from the right and left
# A huge financial deficit inherited from the terminally
irresponsible Bush administration.
And these were just some of the problems left for Obama to deal with when he
came into office!
"Help" from the Right?
What did Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked
conspiracy theorists (what Republicans
were reduced to by the time Obama took office) do to "help" our new president
(and our country) succeed? They claimed he wasn't a real American, didn't have
an American birth certificate, wasn't born here, was secretly a Muslim, was
white-hating "racist", was a secret communist, was the Anti-Christ, was the
reincarnation of Hitler and wanted "death panels" to kill the elderly!
They called for his assassination through the not-so-
subtle use of signs held up at rallies and even a bumper
sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized "tea parties" to sound off against
imagined insults and government in general. They gathered to howl at the moon.
They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but
well-financed) "commentators" from Glenn Beck to Rush Limbaugh.
Utterly discredited Roman Catholic bishops teamed up with
utterly discredited evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying
to improve conditions for the poor, the environment, to diminish the number
of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the
sick! But in Congress the Republican leadership knew only one word: "No!"
In other words the reactionary white, uneducated, crazy far
right, combined with educated neoconservative war mongers, religious right
big business shills, libertarian Fed Reserve-hating gold bugs, gun-toting
crazies, child-molesting acquiescent "bishops", frontier loons and evangelical
gay-hating flakes...they all found one thing to agree on and rally around:
their desire to stop a Black man from succeeding at all costs!
"Help" from the Left?
What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them
blasted the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being
forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan. Choices he'd inherited from the
worst president in U.S. history!
Others stood up to proclaim the President's economic policies
"failed" before the President even instituted them! Others said since not all
gay rights battles had not been
