President Kumbaya

Paul Krugman says it. Letters to the editor of the New York Times from all over the country echo the sentiment. 

It's not that President Obama misled us, posed as something he wasn't and transmogrified once elected.

He did not--or as we now know--could not throw a punch during the campaign, when Sarah Palin used him like the bully uses the fat, soft kid on the playground.

I still like the guy.

But the country needs a leader.

Someone has to tell John Boehner and Mitch McConnell and all those Tea Party deep enders who travel with them,  "You want tax cuts? Fine. You got 'em. But none for the millionaires. That's the line in the sand. You want to hold all tax cuts hostage to your millionaire contributors, you got it. We've got the best Congress money can buy, it's been said. You want to prove that true, dig in your heels.  

The Republican leader of the Senate says publicly his top priority in the coming two years is to be sure I am not re elected. His top priority is not rescuing the economy. His top priority is not creating jobs. His top priority is not even protecting our citizens from the relentless attacks of all those deranged and determined terrorists out there. He wants to demonize me, to bring down all those complex problems to one problem, winning the next Presidential election.

Well, that is not my first priority. And it ought not be the priority of any senator or Congressman. Mr. McConnell wears the American flag as a lapel pin, but does a true patriot look past the problems of the nation he was elected to serve, and see only one hateful goal?  And in the House of Representatives, Mr. Boehner vows to undo healthcare  reform, which he determinedly calls, 'Obamacare.' 

Well, I take that as a compliment. 

For years Mr. Boehner and all those who travel with him ignored the plight of the mothers of children who were uninsured, ignored the kids who were between college and their first jobs, ignored the abuses of insurance companies who could not see past the bottom line to the health of their customers. And now they vow to undo what Congress finally accomplished. 

Are these men really serving the nation? Or are they serving a much smaller group? 

Much has been made of this country being a "Christian nation." Some right wing nuts have insisted I am neither a Christian nor born in America. But what is more Christian than the idea of sacrificing for your neighbor? How many of Christ's homilies were about helping and loving your neighbor. The idea terrifies Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell because that means they might have to give up some of their wealth, some of their power.

Well, the idea that we are all in this together does not terrify me. It did not terrify the visionaries who voted in Social Security and Medicare. 

And the very people who are now intent on destroying these successful are so blinded by their fear they cannot even see it was these very programs which saved the economy and the people on whose fortunes their own fortunes depend. I have tried to be reasonable, tried to listen, but the Republican party, the party which once was home to a revolutionary from my own state of Illinois, is no longer the home of the brave. It has become the temple of thieves."

Somehow, I don't expect the President to call up the Phantom and hire him on as a speech writer.  But we all can dream.