Please take 5 minutes to read an incredible Post [View all]

[samplegirl]

Last edited Mon Mar 31, 2014, 07:08 PM - Edit history (1)

From a fellow D.U.er

What did you say, history? Could you repeat yourself? [View all]

I don't do much of my driving staring into the rear view mirror. It's better to look far down the road, but sometimes danger may approach from that runaway semi I safely passed miles ago, and it's good to warn those ahead of the impending peril bearing down on them. Objects in the mirror are, after all, closer than they appear.

Looking back on my gratefully long trip through life, I recall the Lyndon Johnson years. I was young draft bait as he neared the end of his tenure and absolutely loathed the man. I was one of those motivated teens chanting "hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today" in the public square. It was only decades later that I learned of the great legislation he was signing with his right hand, even as I envisioned him using his left to pile up my classmates like so much cord wood. He passed most of these good deeds while I was an adolescent and preoccupied with my discovery of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, but I suddenly found myself more politically aware as I became old enough to be sent off to war.

I can assure with first hand knowledge that LBJ was not a popular president, to say the least. Of course, the reasons for this disapproval varied greatly, the left generally for the war, and the right for his "Great Society" that brought about Medicare and equal rights, but the disdain was indeed universal. I don't know for sure how the election in '68 would have gone if he decided to run for re-election, but I think he read the writing on the wall correctly and stepped down. I believe one of the prime reasons Nixon entered the Oval Office that year was a combination of the negative perception that democrats were inept nanny-state spendthrifts and Nixon's spurious promise to end the war. I proudly cast my very first presidential vote for George McGovern in 1972 in a fruitless effort to deny Nixon his woefully fated second term.

That was the same year I began what would become a 30 year union career on an assembly line at GM, and it was the next election cycle when I did my part to seat a young Jimmy Carter into office. I have to break it to many here that Carter was also not the respected sage that he's seen as today. The disdain for Carter was loud and widespread. Back then we didn't have the internet, of course, our forum was the break room and the bar across the street from the plant was our Facebook.

It was there that democrats - good union democrats - would pound the lunch table between bites of their McDLT, or order up a round of the new Michelobs at the local bar and carp about how the peanut farmer was taking us down. He was perceived as being weak on foreign policy, what with the Iranian hostage crisis, and incapable of handling the economy, considering our cheapest cars were quickly approaching the $10,000 mark, a price point that precluded many of us from buying our own product.

The vocal dissenters were adamant that being told to turn down our thermostats by some yokel in a dorky sweater was the end of the American dream. Of course I now realize these were the tantrums of spoiled baby boomers who grew up with color TVs, Sansui stereos, and a new sedan in the garage every two years. They felt deeply slighted by the Carter administration and a declining middle class that was beyond his control by that time.

Those malcontents at the time never said it was time to vote for a republican - they'd never say that - but the sentiment was one for a change. It's now that I will make a confession I seldom admit to: I bought into this hype back then, and in 1980 my vote helped elect a good looking charismatic and glib Ronald Reagan. Within the next two years, especially after that POS declared war on organized labor, I understood that I made a horrible mistake, and vowed to never be duped by the whining opinions of chronic complainers again.

When I read a post now in DU that carps outrageously about how Obama isn't the president we expected, those not so distant memories flood back to me. No one here is saying that we should elect a republican in 2016 of course, but the message often is that Obama, and democrats in general, are scarcely better. I'm reading that failure to close Gitmo is akin to burning the Bill of Rights, and his lack of Wall Street oversight is tantamount to economic malfeasance. I hear complaints that drone attacks are as much a horrendous war crime as his reluctance to shut down the Keystone pipeline is purposeful environmental sabotage. The bottom line is always, and once again, that we're disillusioned and need change.

I pretty sure no one here is going to turn to the GOP in 2016, but I'm certain the same people who express such disdain here do the same elsewhere. Perhaps it's complaints at the Thanksgiving table with extended family members, or to fellow drinkers at the local watering hole, or even on other websites in some cases, but the message that we aren't happy with Obama does get out. In a rare political discussion with my conservative cousin a couple months ago, she pointed out that "even democrats are sorry they voted for this president". Though I know it's not for the reasons she assumed, I unfortunately have to give her that technical point now, don't I?

I don't remember now who the tools were that propagated the perception to me that Jimmy Carter was an ineffectually lame goofball of a president and helped usher in the era of Ronald Reagan 30 years ago, but if a young energetic face like Paul Ryan or (shudder) Ted Cruz takes the oath in 2017, the blame will be partly on those who worked five days a week slamming their fist and exclaiming to the electorate, the tavern, and yes, DU, what a disappointing failure Obama was to them.

Maybe decades from now, Obama will be hawking his own 38th book with whoever takes over for Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, and we can all come here to DU XII to fawn about how he accomplished so much good in spite of such fervent opposition. From the Lily Ledbetter Act and the Financial Protection Agency to the genesis of healthcare reform and raising the minimum wage, we will finally agree that these were the good old days. Our perception of the president has always had consequences, and that often changes when we're driving down a newly pot-holed road and see him in the rear view mirror.

-JohnnyRingo







http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4755492


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