TFR Presents: I Was Right

Rarely does a blogger (or, more accurately, an occasional disseminator of nominally interesting online written matter) get to do what I am about to do. (Hold tight.)

Background: Bloggers are the emblem of what's wrong with Western culture; a writer with no credentials or credibility required, espousing whatever he or she chooses—no matter how self-absorbed or banal and without the instruction or guidance or critical voice of an editor—managing to affect the trends of his or her ambient collective (a phrase so vague that wouldn't get past an editor worth his/her weight in red pens), ending up on CNN for nothing, garnering book deals for nothing, judging people needlessly, inventing hipster parlance at the detriment to the florid majesty of a forsaken native language, and worse yet, wasting the time and goodwill of friends and family forced to read his/her writing out of guilt or familial duty (familiar?)...and so on and so forth...the litany is like a walk through Pol Pot's resume...rare is it the chance that a blogger gets to actually say (without some perverse irony behind it)...

I WAS RIGHT!

Well, I was. On November 11, 2007, I, as the sole voice (read: one hand clapping) of trustfundreporting.com, endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton as the best candidate for the 44th President of the United States, a decision I did not take lightly (well, in the post I did) and followed through ideologically all the way until her eventual eventual eventual concession after the muted conclusion of the Democratic primaries (the ones in which she won the popular vote) in June 2008. Abiding by her instructions to her supporters, I did jump fervently behind Barack Obama, but not without secretly fetishing (politically) about what might have been with a Hillary Clinton presidency.

I have given my thirteen months of good faith to President Obama. Following Obama's Cairo Speech, I said to myself, wow, that was something amazing, something that Hillary Clinton could not have ever done. There have been more than a few occasions (his thoughtful approach to Afghanistan for one) when I have been impressed and inspired by the actions of the President Obama.

However, I will now say that the Obama Presidency is a pop and fizzle. The objections that I had to his candidacy (what I considered to be its trendiness at the expense of the center-right of this country—specifically people who did not need to be told "I was right!" by a bunch of swooning celebrities) have now validated my worst fears about this smart and capable man: that his best day in office was January 20, 2009.

Yes, we needed a transformational figure to guide us out of the spiritual morass of the past eight years, but the will to govern (at least in a democracy as polarized as this one) has to be forged with deference to those conceding power, lest one alienate those whose 41st vote might, say, block our health care reform. It wasn't a dithering movement that Candidate Obama bested, it was a bloc with regenerative powers, a "silent majority" who were willing to consider new ideas but were not willing to buy a ticket sold by someone claiming to know the way to El Dorado.

Collectively, we, America, comprise a small child, one that needed coaxing into new changes; if anything, America is like a child of divorce. Obama, in being the revelation, sat America down and said to the child "pack your stuff, we're moving to a new house, you're going to a new school, and we're getting you some new friends as well." Obama, in being so eloquent and deified, offended a lot of people who thought the compass was askew and not the entire map. Those people would be nice to have on-board right about now. (I should add that this is only mostly Obama's fault, but since he allowed his candidacy to be staked on messianic deliverance and the effect was meant to make up for his lack of credentials, I don't feel bad for him. I feel bad for us.)

Now, a responsible writer would enumerate the reasons why the conservative talk radio/Fox News/Tea Partiers and anyone else with their knives out against Obama would have failed against Hillary Clinton. Fortunately for me, in this venue, I am a blogger and therefore do not have to give my arguments that kind of cover. I am actually already on to the next meme about irrational hatred of Bermuda shorts even though spring is still six weeks away. Cranberry vs. Nantucket? We know what President Scott Brown would say! Fail!

BUT, even being semi-invested in the pursuit of a convincing argument (and with at least a third of a cup of my fair trade coffee left [jk about fair trade] how could I not be?), I am going to aver that I don't need to defend what I believe would have allowed Hillary more immunity against the forces plaguing President Obama right now. The reasons Obama voters gave for not supporting Hillary Clinton are reason enough:

She is too much of an insider. Read: Pragmatist. Read: Dealmaker. These are things we needed; did we really earnestly buy that Washington (entrenched to the nines with lobbies and special interests) was going to be unmade without an actual revolution?

Her vote on the Iraq War was poisonous. She bought the same intelligence by which we were all duped. She criticized the war as a lie and a failed policy once revealed.

Yes, Obama gets a ton of credit for seeing it as a mistake, BUT how strangely palliative might it actually have been for consensus building if our leader believed what most of us believed and then felt the outrage that most of us felt at being duped? This goes back into the ever-alienating I-Told-You-So Syndrome. This is why people (not me, but plenty of others) feel talked down to by Obama. Remember, America is a small child. It's nice that we elected a President who governs based on how things should be and not how they really are. I mean it. I just have to ask if it was worth it.

Hillary is not an inspirational figure. If I can cram in one more parallel from the Howard Wolfson playbook: Civil rights would not have advanced without the work of Martin Luther King. Yes. True. Poignant. Meaningful. But the Equal Rights Amendment would not have passed without a legislator, a dealmaker, like Lyndon Johnson.

I am sure there are more bases for me to cover, but my coffee and my hour are both up and as a blogger I cannot invest anymore in this topic or else it might show that I care about something more than site hits, becoming viral, and all the rest of the rot.

To the voiceless dozens reading, thank you for acknowledging how I am right. I hope I'm wrong. I really sincerely do. But even if I am, I'll never have to admit it.

P.S. Bloomberg 2012. I see no other way.