Why Can't President Obama Govern the Way He Camapigned?

Barack Obama and his team ran possibly the most effective campaign in American political history. It was in many ways a grassroots campaign, relying solid local organization, small contributions, decentralized and democratic social networking. His message was decidedly different, substantive, seemingly progressive and more responsive to the needs, desires and hopes of ordinary people. He energized and engaged people beyond the Democrats’ traditional base.

Yet, a year after his landslide victory, he seems unable or unwilling to govern in a way that is consistent with both the concept and substance on which he campaigned. Building consensus has morphed into repeated cave-ins to the power brokers of the status quo. Seemingly progressive concepts (“The only way to get to universal coverage is ingle payer) have been so totally compromised away that there is almost no reform in the healthcare bills now nearly eertain to pass and to create more problems than it solves. Maybe the financial bailouts were necessary, but where is the strong medicine needed to reign in the too-big-to-fail robber barons of Wall Street.

A year after liberals, progressives and persons of color celebrated an historic election, the financial, multi-national corporations and insurance executives who hold the real power in this country are firmly in control, not worried by the President’s program. The oligarchs of the Corporateocracy are, well fed and secure.

I recognize that politics is the art of compromise. I don’t expect an overnight revolution. Nor do I want to fall in with those who have declared a presidency ‘failed’ after less than a year. But for this veteran of the ‘60s failed revolution, and 21st century Progressive, I fear that this presidency is teetering on the edge of a failure to launch.

The Dreamer

A friend just said, 'I'm so confused.' When I asked her 'about what?' she said 'life.'

Sometimes I think my life is just a dream and I will wake up one time and know that for sure. But whose dream is it? Once I thought I was the dreamer, then the dream. What if I am (we are) both dream and dreamer?

Suppose if I am both, I can change the channel, like the TV. Today I want a sit-com dream/life. Drama tomorrow; comedy today.

So where is the line between dream and dreamer?

The longer I live, the more I believe that life is a dream which sometimes come out right and sometimes doesn't. But I also believe that I am the dreamer and dream maker.

Most of us let the dream control us, and never get to know the dreamer. And maybe that is where the confusion lies.