The line in the sand drawn clear, Barack Obama commits to stand and fight.  The Barack Obama elected President in 2008 spoke in the Rose Garden today.  Those craving a President to take on the Republican bullies can smile again.  Two quotes define the battle to follow.

* “I believe the American middle class, who’ve been pressured relentlessly for decades, believe it’s time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.”

* “I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans.  And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.  We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.”

Long have we known the cause to which we were called this day.  In simple clarity the fight takes form.  The victor shapes future America.

“Politics is a contact sport.”  The expression generally offered as a justification for political negativity takes on new meaning today.

In football, team failure often translates to a change in quarterbacks.  The leader shoulders the burden for the foundering group.  Americans justifiably unhappy with the state of the economy and the man who seeks to lead a correction are ready to make a change.  So deep is the despair few notice the quality of the backup.

In 2008, Republicans greeted the overwhelming national endorsement of Barack Obama with what seemed not only callous but a strategy doomed to failure:  obstruct and oppose.  Only one idea brought a chorus of yes.  Tax cuts for the rich.

Swamped by rabid Republican opposition and the political death wish of Congressional Democrats the new President chose his strategy.  Relying on a reasonable America, Barack Obama governs as a moderate Republican.

* Historic reform of health care is founded on private insurance.

* Summers and Geitner are plucked from Wall Street’s huddle to write the economic playbook.

* A stimulus so necessary to revive the American economy is weakened with tax cuts.

* The President joins the Republican focus on deficits for the critical debt limit debate.

An even more damaging choice colors term one.  Republican bullies receive a turned cheek.  For those supporting his courageous fight in the Democratic primary, for those bearing witness to the impossible dream of a black leader in America, the strategy tastes of a bitter finish.

In sports and politics Americans rally to the fighter.  More important in hard times than good, leaders better define themselves with a strong fight for principle than a compromise win.

Democrats’ best hope now rests ironically with those they most oppose.  Eventually voters do compare the quality of the replacement.  Subtlety is no help to the cause.  Prey that the Tea Party will force one of their own on the Republican Party.

Like Gollum following the ring into the fire, Mitch McConnell slithers across the political landscape ever seeking Barack Obama’s defeat.  Velvet lies mask evil intent.

Almost never challenged by a courting media, McConnell leads the Republican Character Assassination Squad.  So self-righteous that arrogance would be an improvement, McConnell creates a world noxious with the gas seeping from his mean spirit.  Always rising to deny—benefits to long-term unemployed, health care to fifty million Americans, an endless list really—McConnell is poster child to a ruined politics.

Close your eyes and you can see him standing outside staring at the White House in the middle of the night muttering, “My precious.  My precious.”

Even in our schizophrenic national politics we should all acknowledge President Barack Obama has been dealt a bad hand.  My humble (or what sometimes will sound not so humble) critique is that he has played it badly.  The critique fits within a context:

1.  Note to Tea Party:  If a group of Arabs in the Middle East said they had a weapon to destroy America’s, and perhaps the world’s, economy and that unless they were given what they wanted they would use it, the name by which you would call them is “terrorist”—and you would say it with a bloodlust.

2.  Note to Republicans:  If any group in America had as a first objective the destruction of a sitting Republican President no matter the cost to country or world they would emerge from the crucible of your propaganda machine guilty of treason.

3.  Note from a thoughtful nation (surely one exists somewhere):  Any candidate asserting evolution is just a “theory,” climate change is a “hoax,” Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen, he is a Muslim, is disqualified for any public office in a world in desperate need of capacity for complexity.

4.  Among uninspiring choices in an uninspiring time, so far only one meets even minimum qualifications for the office of President of the United States:  Barack Obama.

Preamble and context for posts to follow.

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.”

As devout devotees of their own power and the interests of the rich, Republicans gain the votes of so many.  The words of Thomas Jefferson offer solution to the riddle of this American Sphinx.

Delete obfuscating language to consider only some of what Republicans oppose:

* Government.

* Stimulating the stagnant American economy.

* Rebuilding American infrastructure.

* Jobs for the unemployed.

* Regulating a corrupt financial system.

* Protecting consumers.

* Social Security.

* Medicare.

* Medicaid.

* Health care for all Americans.

* Even the fact of climate change.

* Green energy policies.

* Egalitarian tax policies.

* Anything President Obama advocates.

Consider most of what Republicans support:

* Private sector control of our lives.

* Tax cuts for the rich.

* Tax cuts for corporations.

* The defeat of President Obama.

How to understand the 2010 and potential 2012 Republican victory?  Certainly Congressional Democrats win the trophy for finding defeat in the face of certain victory.  President Obama still seeks something for which he will truly fight.  Two realities join to destroy voter enthusiasm.

Republicans daily deploy one of the world’s most effective propaganda machines.  No longer seeking truth, the American media stands in ruins.  Thoughtful, alternative explanations find voice:

* Voters see Democrats more identified with wildly unpopular government.

* Voters believe Democrats in office will not do what campaigning Democrats promise.

It all sounds somehow hollow as the cause fueling Republican success.  For those seeking to know, Thomas Jefferson offers refuge:

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck.”

Sometimes while playing blackjack and the cards are running bad I’ll sit out a hand or two and see if it makes a difference.  Often it does—in the Casino.

My last post to this blog was June 10, 2010.  That’s sitting out a lot of hands.  Considering public life in America today, my silence hasn’t helped—not that I carry expectations that my writing will cause morning in America.

So, I’m back.  Wrestling with a lot from my personal and our common lives:  retirement, family challenges, friendships, the state of our nation.  Silence hasn’t helped me much.  Another way to say that with a clear warning for those who go here is “I’m irritable.”  I may feel more irritation now than I did when George W. Bush lived in the White House.  Enough warning.

The basic rule governing this blog still applies.  Writing is a form of personal therapy.  Anyone who cares to read is welcome but my objective is not building an audience.  If you are friend or family it’s really OK when we see one another if you haven’t read my latest post.

Get ready, get set……

Whether a father, a child, a friend, a president life can overwhelm.  A problem eludes even the solution fashioned by great minds.  In the midst of battle, another problem takes the stage.  A third joins and the weight borne crushes.  Impossible to avoid or ignore how do you act when confronted by such problems?

I don’t know.  But even in ignorance pieces of the puzzle are there.  Keep breathing.  Call on foundational values.  Openness created from honesty, humility, the history of your journey, reason, love, propel the next small step.  To reach the objective movement is required.

A man approaches Abraham Lincoln and asks how he could have known the strategy to win the Civil War.  I didn’t, replied Lincoln.  Like the captain on a Mississippi River boat I could steer toward the next visible point.  Repetition carries us home.

Great battles with some problems alter life.  Stamina, like hope, has limits.  Lincoln paid a price for the weight resting on his shoulders.  It is a life truth that some are called to carry more, to suffer more.  Whether a father, a child, a friend, a president, life can overwhelm.  Keep breathing.  Take the next small step toward the next visible point.

Whether legend or truth, I remember this story from the 2008 presidential primary campaign:  During a church service Ethel Kennedy leans over to Barack Obama and says, “You know, we are passing the torch.”

On January 28, 2009, Ted Kennedy thunders the pass in his endorsement speech at American University.  And in that moment, the power of oratory nearly makes it so.  In the hearts and in the souls of those of us who lived in Camelot for a fleeting American moment in the 1960s, deeply convicted of Barack Obama’s promise, the idea that the legend of John Fitzgerald Kennedy could be bequeathed is as real as the morning sunrise.

We survive what follows:  an unending, conflicted primary campaign; an American resurrection at the Denver convention; a general election campaign so much closer than it should have been; the crisp, cold joy of a Washington D.C. morning January 20th 2009; the crush of two-million human bodies desperate to witness the Constitutional result of the Nation’s decision.  Individual stories mesh into a national fabric from which Barack and Michelle Obama step forward and sway At Last to Beyonce’s lilting voice.

Governing becomes a sand that falls through outstretched fingers.  The national leader to whom words had passed the torch comes face-to-face with the most intransigent major political party in American history.  Its objective focused on blocking any solutions—even the act of appointing relatively minor government officials.  Willing to pay any cost Republicans marshal their disciplined march toward a single objective:  Barack Obama’s political demise.

Expectations of reasoned solutions from Americans voters gifted with political power dissolve.  The haunting words passing the torch ring hollow in the nation’s capitol.   Promised reform and national regeneration an idea now possible only through the President’s single, complex political party.  Flailing in the face of the new challenge, hope freezes above all the pictures of the January 20th two million.

The screaming wake up call sounds from Massachusetts.  A House Speaker muscles aside an incrementalist approach offered by a Chief of Staff.  Embracing Nancy Pelosi’s bold awakening the President discovers his capacity to lead that we found so compelling during his improbable campaign.  Binding not to “the need to win but the need to be true” Barack Obama turns to those with the eyes to see and the ears to hear—all, all, Democrats.  We hold our collective breath this past Sunday.  Then suddenly our lungs fill with the air of thawed hope.

In action, through leadership, Barack Obama closes his fingers around the passed torch.

For me, the great mystery of the Obama Administration is its struggle with simple truth.  Why not name the clarity now offered by Democrats and Republicans?

The GOP stands universally against nearly all proposals from the Administration.  Moreover it offers no substantive alternatives.  From health care to financial reform Republicans just say no.

The American public is unaware.  Recent Pew research reveals that only 32% of voters know that the Senate passed health care reform without a single Republican vote.  26% know it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster.  Winning a majority of 51 Senate votes accomplishes nothing.  First you need 60 votes to break the Republican filibusters used on nearly every issue.

Pew’s two data points make clear a minority of voters understands the Republican strategy:  win political advantage by opposing every proposed action.  The reward emerges as voters aim their frustration at majority Democrats by voting Republican—in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

If a 51 vote Senate majority would carry the day we would now have health care reform, financial regulation, greater employment stimulus for the economy, and many more filled high level positions in the Executive Branch requiring Senate confirmation.

The mystery of the Administration is that it knows what is transparent in today’s politics:  bipartisanship isn’t possible.  Rather than speaking in a nuanced way that seeks to convince of his desire for compromise the President should simply speak the truth.  Consistently name what he seeks to accomplish, consistently name the specific obstruction from Republicans, consistently offer to work with all seeking solutions in good faith.  The President provides the example.

President Obama appeared recently before the Republican Congressional Caucus.  With clarity and intellect, with respect and civility he named their political talking points and the lies embedded in them.  President Obama schooled the nation.  This must become the communication strategy that guides the Administration’s bully pulpit.

I don’t know whether victory is the result.  American voters determine victory.  I do know that naming the truth and standing for our commitment and values grows the spirit.

In the second day of so many trying to make so much sense of the special election in Massachusetts there is only one analysis that makes sense.  There is no sense to be made of the result.

People were angry about joblessness, mortgage foreclosures, health care and Wall Street?  If that’s true then the voters really are dumb.  They voted for a guy who will join 40 other Republicans in the Senate who can only speak one word:  “no.”  “No” to a stimulus that reduces joblessness, “no” to helping those struggling with foreclosure, “no” to health care reform, and “no” to any meaningful reform of banking regulation.

Even worse, Massachusetts’s voters have endorsed one of the most shameful and destructive political strategies in American history.  They’ve enabled the Republicans who believe that by standing in opposition to any solutions—ANY solutions—they will achieve the political result they live for—their need to retake power.  Remembering the 2000 to 2008 time period, won’t that be a great experience to relive?  Massachusetts apparently thinks so.  They endorsed it Tuesday.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate a protest vote.  If that’s what Massachusetts was up to they could have voted for Joe Kennedy the Libertarian on the ballot.  With intent, they chose the Republican.

Let me be clear, Democrats have indeed earned our anger.  They allow their colleagues—Lieberman and Nelson the best examples—to use the process to work against common good and for their own individual, petty desires.  They wallow in this sickening scene for nearly a full year.  They cower in the shadow of Wall Street’s titans.

We could rise from the ashes by taking advantage of the opportunity Massachusetts gifted to Democrats.  Now that 60 Senators is past history let’s establish some party discipline.  Remove Lieberman’s and Nelson’s seniority.  Take Lieberman’s Homeland Security committee and install a new chair who is not a certifiable head case and actually gives a damn about America.

Most importantly, may our President find the voice he walked away from as he left the campaign trail and moved into the White House.  We need his spirit, intelligence, capacity to restore America.  If he stands we will stand with him.  Together we will do what we knew we could do in November 2008.  We’ll find out January 27th when President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union.