OBAMA TAKES CHARGE
by Daren Foster

Goodbye George. Hello Barack.

Is there a term more pitiable than ‘lame duck’? It denotes a sense of tits on a bull uselessness, a past the best before date, impotence. On your way out the door, would you mind turning off the lights as everyone else has long gone to bed.

Yet every 4 or 8 years, the Most Powerful Nation on the Face of God’s Green Earth™©® subjects itself to almost 3 months of this sort of limbo, floundering rudderless in the political sea, as defenceless as a snake that’s just shed its skin. This latest period of executive transition has, arguably, been even longer than usual since the 43rd President of the United States lost his mandate to lead halfway through his second term. As wars raged and former tyrants once more grew brazen and the world economy slipped into a crisis not faced for a generation or two, the one they call W. stood idly by, smirking and blathering to an audience that dwindled to little more than family and those paid to listen.

It is into this scenario that President Bush delivered his last address to the nation with everyone the world over counting down the days until his successors succeeded him. In what may qualify as the biggest understatement ever affixed to the Bush II presidency, the world endured tumultuous times during his reign. So it might seem logical that many would tune in to see what the man had to say about his time as president. No one did. Not even PBS aired the address live, my local affiliate choosing to show some interior design show instead. The world had tuned the man out, it seemed. January 20, 2009: The End of an Error, as a t-shirt says.

All eyes had turned to incoming President, Barack Obama who had appeared out of nowhere just over 4 years earlier with a keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic convention. He’d handily won a U.S. Senate seat in 2006 and, sensing the winds of change building over the nation, he immediately set out on his quixotic quest for the White House, besting the first viable female candidate for President, herself a former First Lady, in the primaries before drubbing a war veteran and uncanny Abe Simpson impersonator in the general election. Yes We Can, he convinced the nation who would set aside some 400 years of discrimination to elect its first African-American as President.

The new President is a speechmaker of exceptional skill. Quite possibly the best to be seen in these parts since the advent of the television age or maybe it just seems that way, coming hard on the heels of the most inarticulate man to ever hold the office, bar none. If Barack Obama takes oratory to dizzying heights, George W. did the same with the art of the malapropism. Books have been filled with his assault on the English language. Stand-up comedians worth their salt gave up mining the territory for laughs early in his second term. It was just too easy. Shooting fish in a barrel.

So, little wonder the majority of the population had stopped listening to their outgoing President. It was just too difficult trying to unravel what he said and if you managed to, it was that much more shocking. How do you deliver your final address in those conditions?

By going straight for the throat, it would seem. Not more than two or three breaths from his opening greetings and salutations, President Bush spoke the word that defined his presidency (no, not ‘incompetence’ or ‘blundering’): 9/11. Typically for him, it wasn’t even a real word. 9/11. A second date which will live in infamy for America. The Twin Towers. An Axis of Evil. The War on Terror. A descent into 7 years of darkness where everything that could possibly go wrong, did. All the outgoing President could grasp onto during his last address to the nation was that under his watch, America did not get hit a second time. Ignore all that’s occurred since the initial assault. The nearly 5000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The suspension of both domestic and international civil rights. A major economic upheaval. At least, the American home front was spared another murderous foray by the real bad guys. As if they needed to strike again. The damage they inflicted on September 11, 2001 was all that was necessary to get the ball rolling. Bush and Co. took it from there.

But Americans no longer snap-to at the invocation of fear and the country has moved on. It’s not you, George. It’s me. We’ve just.. grown apart. OK, maybe it was you. And yes, there is someone else.

The crush on the new man has blossomed into an infatuation since his November election. America’s hopes in their new leader grew as the bad news piled up throughout the fall and winter. Expectations ran exceedingly high, partly due to how low they had sunk but largely because Barack Obama, by the very nature of his ascendancy to the Presidency, made it impossible to imagine otherwise.

On a dais of hope scaffolded with rainbows, he stepped forward to become President of the United States. Some two million people crowded into the Mall between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial to bear witness. Many political observers likened the elevated buzz to that of JFK’s inauguration. (No, not me. That was before my time. Just.) It actually felt more than overwrought hyperbole to say that the whole world was watching.

How’d he do, the newly sworn in 44th President of the United States? It seems impossible that anyone, no matter how exceptional or gifted or monstrously intelligent and well-meaning, could live up to the hype drummed up over the last 77 days. Given our A.D.D.-istic propensity for short attention spans, there was every reason to see this as the beginning of Obama fatigue rather than a first step in a positive direction.

But for at least 18 minutes, the new President delivered, speaking to us as adults and not slightly retarded children. There was no dodging the oncoming storms that sit poised at several different points along the horizon. Just the opposite, as if President Obama (right now, I’m liking the very feel of writing those 2 words) was summoning ill winds toward him because there was no way of avoiding them. Like Henry V before his troops at Agincourt (at least in Shakespeare’s version), President Obama (yep, still liking it) prepped the American people for the battle ahead. A battle that could no longer be ignored or sidestepped but, with the same American spirit that has triumphed over adversity for more than 200 years, it is a battle that can be, must be, won.

It is difficult to let go of the cynicism that has grown strong roots. I can’t remember a time when it hasn’t held sway over the popular imagination. Sure, everyone can point and claim that because of this person or that circumstance, we are cynical. But it may just be that cynicism is easier than engagement; the default reaction to the overwhelming task of seeking out justice and fairness.

It was invigorating to let slip the heavy weight of doubt and scepticism even for just a few moments and give way to the lightness of possibilities the newly installed President exhorted from us. No question the man will fail to live up to all the hopes and faith his countrymen and the rest of the world have placed in him. That’s not cynicism. It’s just basic pragmatism because no one person could possibly deliver on all the promises to fully right our troubled world. But, if each and every one of us would just set our sights a little higher…

CLICK HERE and Read More Daren Foster Columns!WATCH THE SHORT FILMS WRITTEN BY DAREN:

NOSTALGIA 8min, DRAMA

FAMILY PRACTICE 11min, FILM NOIR/DARK COMEDY

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