Praise For Obama

It’s been easy past weeks to respond to Obama’s many failures, domestic and international. It’s been fun too, even satisfying as most of these were predicted in this and accompanying blogs.

But it’s just as easy to acknowledge his successes. We want to do that. Certainly his response to the Haiti tragedy is commendable. Nothing wrong with today’s National Angel Island Day proclamation either (in honor of those immigrants who disembarked there). What else? Oh, and his decision to send the very minimum number of troops requested to Afg.; he’s still endangering my son-in-law, but it could have been worse.

However, although certainly not what he intended, his single key contribution to the welfare of this country - race relations. We are ahead of most observers on this one. Let us explain.

Coming into Obama’s election, race had pretty much settled down in this country. Rice and Powell were both 100% black; it was incidental to most of us. Who cares? Not a big deal for most folk, for members of either party.

We can be proud of Democrats who felt that way, especially given their heritage. Slavery was part of their party platform up to and through the Civil War. Still, they carried the curse - Truman’s mom, when offered Lincoln’s bed in the White House, said she’d prefer the floor. But these folk continued to improve, or at least forget (even though Dem party policy itself continues to this day to use blacks as a lever).

So as I say, we were getting along pretty well. Then Obama appeared on the scene. He cleverly used his half race to further his ends, an unspoken bargain of sorts with guilty whites, a skill honed in the grievance industry. This was not the crude "in your face" variety of Jackson or Sharpton, but a new, refined, nuanced approach. And he used race repeatedly in the primary, in Berlin; he used race in the Bates controversy, always keeping it just sub-surface for instant retrieval.

The result - an upheaval, a final regurgitation, a final sickening of the very subject by most Americans, including blacks. Obama, without intending it, has made most of us feel that we are decent people, we are not racists, and dog gone it, it’s an insult to blacks to continue to treat these people like cripples. Enough is enough.

Obama - We’re sick of hearing about this nonsense, unending, especially from you. You lied to us. Now you’ve done it. Now we’re moving on; we’re leaving you and your kind to gather dust.

Oh, and thanks for the gift.

Robert Craven