He's Got the Whole World In His Hands

Obama must be feeling a lot like Atlas right now.

For those of y'all not up on your Greek mythology, Atlas was one of the Titans, and according to legend, he was forced to hold the entire world on his shoulders for all eternity. In fact, the only time he got a break was when Hercules was stupid enough to take on the duty for a couple of hours. Once freed of that burden, Atlas decided he liked life a lot more without having to carry the Earth on his back and told Hercules the job was his.

As strong as Hercules was, he almost died trying to hold the world. However, Atlas's stupidity eventually saved old Hercules. He convinced the Titan that he loved holding the world, and asked Atlas to hold the Earth for one second while he got a cushion for his shoulders. Atlas agreed, and Hercules left him there looking stupid.

Now that I've finished with that history lesson, back to my idea that Obama must feel like Atlas right now. And, George W. Bush is playing the role of Hercules.

See, Bush used trickery, deception and division to gain access to the White House for the past eight years. During his tenure he's royally screwed us all. The economy is crap, national security is crap and the environment is crap. In fact, the world currently looks like the backyard at Clifford the Big Red Dog's house, big stinking piles of crap everywhere.

So, I'm guessing that President-elect Barack Obama feels the weight of the world weighing pretty heavily on his shoulders right now as Bush shifts that burden away from himself as quickly as possible. Everybody was praising Bush for promising to make sure the transition to a new administrations was smooth, but I wasn't surprised at all. I'm pretty sure Bush doesn't have any desire to be president anymore; he's made all the money he needed to make, and he damn sure doesn't want to clean up his own mess.

To make matter worse, Obama is inheriting one of the toughest jobs in the world with massive expectations of success and failure. Everybody who drank the hope Kool-Aid expects Obama to make their lives better, and everybody who passed when the cup came around expects him to bring on Armageddon. I read a piece on a website I frequent that basically noted that five days into his tenure, Obama was already looking like a failure due to the selections he's made for this White House staff.

Five days in!

I appreciate that need to expect results and not let Obama slide just because we share a race, but I'm going to need all the cynics to fall back. As a cynic myself, I think I've earned that right. Just fall back.

Give the man time, at least one term, to see if he can right this ship and stay true to the ideals he espoused on the campaign trail. If he fails, don't vote for him again. Trust me, if black people refuse to vote for him, there is no way Obama gets another term in the White House. It's that simple; if he doesn't make our lives better, we can just withhold our support.

The truth is, Obama has a lot of power right now, and he's got a big ass mess to clean up using that power. I honestly don't expect him to get around to throwing the might of the presidential office behind many issues other than the economy or Iraq for quite some time. I'm cool with that. All I expect him to do is make smart decisions that improve people's lives. Nothing more and nothing less.

Although he could curse Bush our for me the next time he visits the White House.


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