Posted on 08/14/2010 11:51:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
IN THE PAST two years, there was perhaps no more anticipated speech than the inaugural address given by President Obama in January 2009.
One can still recall the excitement of a new president – a new generation taking the mantle of national leadership. Hope and change. The festivities. The symbolism. And it all took place on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday no less.
Many were waiting for a "come with me to the mountaintop" speech, an inspiring oration like the one that Obama gave at Grant Park on election night or at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
It was not to be. Instead, in what will go down as one of the most significant speeches in history, Obama gave a somber address, talking about how tough things were and how Americans had to pull together to raise themselves up again. He quoted Scripture and talked about putting away childish things, by which he meant the childish politics of the last decade.
It was a speech for adults, and it stood in marked contrast to what passed for political discourse in this country in recent years, when the American public was frequently treated like a class of fourth-graders, divided like teams in the simplistic world of the schoolyard, complete with insults and name calling.
The Obama inaugural was the start of something different. It was the birth of "the politics of maturity."
Of course, being mature doesn't mean the Obama administration is mistake-free. Rather, it means that when they screw up — as was clearly the case with the recent episode involving U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod — the president and his team handled it in an adult fashion. They apologized. They admitted their mistake. They attempted to make amends.
A commitment to the politics of maturity is why Obama — despite all indications that his efforts will be fruitless — continues to reach out to Republicans in pursuit of bipartisanship. This commitment is what made his visit to the Republican congressional caucus retreat last January possible, and so extraordinary. It may not have been good political theater, but it engendered a remarkably rational dialogue, and turned out to be remarkably good politics — for both sides.
Alas, while Obama tries to act like an adult and serve as a father-figure of the Democratic Party, a number of his children — largely among the party's liberal base and grass-roots activists — are acting like, well, children. This is fast becoming a late summer ritual, an annual temper tantrum when Democrats go into fourth-grade mode and express their disillusionment, disappointment and even disgust with their own leaders.
Remember the summer of 2008? Democrats were stamping their feet, demanding to know why Obama the candidate wasn't responding forcefully enough to Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, on national security and taxes. They were scared of "Palin the superstar," with her smiling face on the cover of nearly every magazine. They were terrified that their party had no persuasive message for the middle class and independent voters. "We finally have a chance to win, and Obama's losing the election!" they cried.
Remember the summer of 2009? Some Democrats were demanding that Obama act more forcefully on health care reform. They were worried that the elusive dream of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and so many others would, once again, lose out to entrenched special interests and their congressional allies who didn't want any change at all. "Obama wasn't involved early enough, or personally enough!" they complained. "He let Congress run with the ball and now it is all falling apart!"
In 2010, we are — once again — about to enter this curious world of late-summer anxiety, the angst of August. Over the next several weeks, Democrats, mostly within their liberal base, will be on television talk shows, on their blogs, in the papers, whining that the Obama administration hasn't accomplished anything, how the president is "too aloof" for a nation with such high unemployment, how he is not partisan enough to the fight the Republicans.
They will argue that the president, who led his party to huge victories only two years ago, has compromised too much with Wall Street banks and given in on Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. They'll complain that he didn't spend nearly enough on the stimulus and "don't ask, don't tell" is still on the military books.
All this, and more, will come from Obama's own partisans. They will complain — loudly — how nothing in the country has really changed, and if there has been change, it hasn't been fast enough, or gone far enough.
The disconnect between the president and his own Democratic partisans is like the relationship between adults who know better and children who are acting younger than they really are. The Obama kids never listened closely enough to the president's thoughtful, father-like speeches from the campaign and certainly the inauguration. Somehow, they only focused only on the amorphous, and intoxicating, promise of "hope and change" — and forgot that Obama never failed to mention how tough the road ahead would be.
"The politics of maturity" doesn't begin and end with the president and his administration. His supporters have to remember that just because we have a new politics doesn't mean that we don't still have politics. The way this country governs — indeed, the way it was designed to be governed — is still, fundamentally, about bargaining, compromising, persuading and, ultimately, getting the votes.
If Democrats are going to defy the predictions of gloom and doom this coming November, they should grow up a bit and take the lead of their young, but very mature, president.
******
Ben Dworkin is director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University in Lawrenceville.
My 6th Grade teacher’s hair went completely white overnight in Vietnam according to another teacher, and I’d guess he was only in his mid twenties.
Hilarious stuff!
Three times I checked to see if this was a John Semmens satire piece.
Nobody could write this kind of crap with a straight face.
Examples of maturity (to stupid liberals, anyway) include:
“I want to know whose ass to kick”
and
“I won”
I didn't know they had Internet access in insane asylums.
Russ Meyers' "Faster Civil Rights! Kill! Kill!"
This guy is from another planet - this administration sounds more like a petualant child and treats us all to demeaning lectures. Show me a Dim who looks and acts like an adult, and I'll show you someone who has infiltrated them.
This is actually a frightening propaganda piece by the 0bama regime.
While we read and comment here in FR-land about it, there are millions reading it and seriously considering the thoughts this propagandist attempts to put forward.
0bama is cutting off the non-loyalists. When Mao was faced with such dis-loyalties he had them killed.
Look for tragedy in the next few weeks. The regime is a mature chess player of politics and a master manipulator.
He will silence dissent within the ranks. This piece and the other one linked in the thread are warnings. Loyalty is to 0bama, not the country.
This would be laughable, if it were not for how dangerous 0bama truly is.
Only an academician can live in such a theoretical world!
He has been a Jewish student leader, a Democratic activist, and a candidate for elective office. Now, at 41, Ben Dworkin has been tapped for one of the state’s most visible perches for political analysis and commentary.
Gov. Christi...here’s another wooly-headed professor whose job is expendable. What embarrassing tripe.
Mine started really turning after I started working as a prosecutor doing child abuse stuff.
“You can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer’s dime,” Obama said in Indiana before his wife took her 5th vacation since late June...to a 5 star resort in Spain.
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