Craven me

I haven’t been commenting much on political things lately, partly because of the apathy I wrote about in an earlier blog but also because I haven’t been able to get a handle on our president. He is so remote and self-contained that he makes me realize that I have probably succumbed to the sports media form of public debate. I rather wanted to see him exert some muscle and act out in some way my own anger over the way the previous administration ran the country into the ground.

Of course he hasn’t done that—and he’s not going to. His methodical control has left me somewhat perplexed. I am forced to recognize that the shout and yell form of political discourse had infected even me. So I’ve been quiet. I had to regroup. Could all this needed and careful reform actually be boring? Could all the needed change he is bringing actually be tasting like medicine without the spoonful of sugar?

I’m very much of the school of we’ve brought this upon ourselves when things go wrong, as they certainly did with the presidency of George W. Bush. History may, of course, prove him right, but I don’t think so. Not many of us really wanted to see the super rich become the obscenely rich or for corporate America to remove the pretense of even liking the public let alone wanting to do right by us. But outside of voting in the Democrats we haven’t really had our pound of flesh. It’s coming in small doses—keeping lobbyists off government advisory panels and restricting former high military brass from serving as lobbyists and advisors—so we keep saying, hey, change is coming. But it’s coming without drama and without real satisfaction for the vengeful (yep—me) among us.

All this convinces me that it’s really difficult to come down to earth after an adrenaline rush. During WWII with its shortages and bombing and enlistments, people lived high—they could be killed at any moment, there was a ferocious thrill to the latest news, there was a sense of everyone being in something together. Then came peace. It could never compete.

My former boss, the president of the University of Hawaii, was a dynamic dynamo, bursting with ideas and thoroughly exhausting to anyone who worked with him. Everyone said they wanted calm and more emphasis on planning. The next president brought those qualities and lo and behold people started complaining about the lack of excitement. Yet the calm, quiet president laid the groundwork for the next burst of advancement.

I have the feeling that when Obama is through with his work, this nation will have been transformed. Very quietly and without fanfare he is rebuilding. We need this. I just hope that the country can get beyond its fascination with celebrity politicians and understand that the qualities making a politician charismatic are not the same qualities needed to run a complex bureaucratic government.

But what the hell, craven me, I’m looking forward to the fireworks when Ms. Palin tries for the presidency. It will be such fun to oppose her.