I wanted to write a reflective piece on Obama’s first year, but glancing at the blogosphere this has already been done – to death (How many “What does Massachusetts mean for Obama” articles can you write?).
But then I came across this article from the UK Guardian – “Fox most trusted news channel in US, poll shows”. Fox News has a higher approval rating than Obama. What does this say about his first year in office?
My own personal reflections is that Obama is wasting a massive opportunity to finally unite America – a country which has been physiologically abused by fear and shame for so long (Slavery, Watergate, Vietnam and 9/11), elements he could tackle once and for all by taking one symbolic issue, Health Care, and making a profound and meaningful statement – Every American Citizen, poor, rich, black, white (and in between), tall short, male, female, gay or straight is entitled to Healthcare – All in the hopes of finally uniting the worlds cultural experiement.
Now this would have taken cajones and he would have spent the majority of his political capital but he’d still be in the same position he is standing in today, but instead of giving a speech about how he takes responsibility for not bringing about a bigger change, he would have been explaining to the American people why universal Healthcare is so important. More important than partisanship, certainly more important than money.
Admittedly all of this self righteous talk comes from a British citizen, but as a people we are very much united on 90 – 95% (heck id even go as far to say 99%) of important issues which Americans are divided on today. If a political party was to run in Britain’s General Elections on an anti-NHS, pro-life (against a woman’s right to choose) and pro-guns agenda, they simply wouldn’t get any seats in parliament. Now not to say that any of the aforementioned are the right policies – but they are policies which the majority of the British people agree.
I feel Obama’s understands that he has to be a transformational president, a “Uniter-in-chief” if you will – but I feel he has to start being more forceful in selling his agenda, standing up for what he believes in and start making the hard decisions on where he feels America should go next – How America should progress – How America should heal before this opportunity is lost for good.
Just a normal everyday bloke writing about films.