Doomed from the Start?

I sincerely hope not.

President-elect Obama has had more face time with the press than the actual President over the last two weeks. Bush set new records for most vacation time ever taken by a President. So now that we're basically just watching clock waiting for him to be on permanent vacation, he raises the bar on Lame Duckery. Honestly, does he know we're still paying his salary? It seems like between Bush abdicating his duties as President and Obama officially restrained from doing anything, we are a nation without a president.

It's just as well, as far as I'm concerned. A nation with no President at all is infinitely better than a nation with George W. Bush in charge. I've made no secret of my opinions here. I believe George W. Bush's presidency to be the worst thing to happen to our nation since the assassination of John Kennedy. Worse than 9/11, worse than Vietnam, worse than Watergate. Every day we inch towards the post-Bush era I breathe a little easier and become a little more optimistic about our nation's future.

So when it comes to President-Elect Obama, I cannot help but be optimistic. Bush lowered expectations across the board, and we not only tolerated it, we re-elected him. I have a theory that in years to come historians will refer to this as the Era of Mediocrity. We allowed ourselves to be led by a C-student, and we totally abandoned our quest for excellence as a nation. In doing so, we now have an economy that is circling the drain. We have a list of nations that hate us far outnumbering our allies. We have debt unimagined. We are, as a nation guilty of war crimes so multiple and egregious that we may never be the Good Guys again. We have collectively gone rogue from our own founding principles of liberty and freedom, let alone prosperity.

All Obama has to do to achieve greatness in the wake of the Bush Years is not screw up any worse. And screwing up worse than Bush did would require a lethal combination of creativity and psychosis. Obama, it seems, is only creative. Alas.

The thing is, Obama is getting roundly criticized by the Collective Right Wing Peanut Gallery (CRWPG), the same group that managed to stick its fingers in their ears for the past eight years and drown out any valid criticisms of Bush. Watching Fox News handle Bush's many blunders essentially boiled down to "LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA LA". Anyone not willing to swallow the Kool-Aid was deemed to be part of the liberal media conspiracy. Watching Fox News was like the cop waving people past a scene of carnage and assuring us "move along, people - nothing to see here".

These same "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" acolytes have uncorked their collective suspicion and turned it to a man who isn't even in charge yet. Believe me when I tell you there is already a website called ImpeachObama.com - weeks before he's had a chance to do anything remotely impeachable. Now, I can appreciate cynicism and I've often confused pessimism with being realistic, but this is too much. The more Obama's people talk about hope, the less his opponents seem to have.

In terms of Obama's cabinet picks, he gets criticism in both fresh faces he chooses (inexperienced newbies bound to screw up with rookie mistakes) and the more experienced people he picks (corrupt insiders that prove Obama never really meant to bring change anyhow). When Obama chose L.A.'s mayor Villaraigosa to be a part of his economic advisory team, people who already didn't like the Mayor said that this was proof that Obama was out to destroy our nation's economy. I saw it as a validation of Villaraigosa's job as mayor.

The point: There's always two ways to look at things, and in the case of President-elect Obama, I say this: the guy isn't even running things yet. He hasn't signed one bill into law. He hasn't addressed Congress or the American People as their President. He is using the time after the election to get his act together so that once he take the Oath of Office he can get to work immediately. And perhaps, just perhaps, we ought to suspend criticism of him until he's actually done something as President.