Editor:
A year ago, if we had read in the paper that employers were hiring again, that health-care legislation was proceed ing without a bump, or that Afghanistan suddenly became a nice place to take your kids, we would’ve known we were being lied to. Back then, we recognized that the problems President Barack Obama inherited wouldn’t go away over night.
During his campaign, Obama clearly said that an economy that took eight years to break couldn’t be fixed in a year and that Afghanistan was a graveyard of empires and would not be an easy ven ture for us. Candidate Obama didn’t feed us happy-talk, which is why we elected him.
He never said America could solve its health-care, economic and security problems without raising the deficit. In stead, he talked of hard choices, of gov ernment taking painful and contentious first steps towards fixing problems that can’t be left for another day.
Right after Obama’s election, we seemed to grasp this. We understood that companies would be happy to squeeze more work out of frightened em ployees and would be slow to hire more. We understood that the banks that had extorted us out of billions of dollars were lying when they said they would share their recovery. We understood that a national consensus on health care would not come easily.
Candidate Obama never claimed that his proposed solutions would work flaw lessly right out of the box, and we re spected him for that.
But today, the president is being at tacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning. He never made such a promise. It’s time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work and that a president can’t just wave a magic wand and fix everything.
ELLIE LIGHT
CORNWALL
http://www.ldnews.com/letterseditor/ci_14243818