Tuesday, November 11, 2008

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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10 comments:

LISA VAZQUEZ said...

Hey there,

Black folks need to realize that Obama needs two terms in office to get his plans off of the drawing board...yes...two terms.

Black people in every state need to start financing more political campaigns because more blacks need to be in the Senate...and in the House!!

All those folks crying that Barack won...how much did they contribute? We need to stop wanting something by spending nothing...

Amen!!

Lisa

Moose said...

Great analogy, thanks for this . . . nice piece.

Anonymous said...

Love this post! I agree with you 100%. Let the man get in the office first before we start passing judgement, heck he has quite a job on his hand, and its not one I would want.

Admin said...

Not even sworn in yet or had the tile 'elect' dropped from his name and people are already backbiting.

It's a damn shame.

As tough as it is I think the Obama Administration can do the very best they can for their country. Far better than Bush that's for sure.

Anonymous said...

Jeez, could those folks at least wait to say he's dropping the ball until at least AFTER he actually takes office in mid-January?
;-)

Big Man said...

People are really dogmatic about what qualifies as a good job by the president. I guess I haven't taken the time to develop a true set of criteria.

Kit (Keep It Trill) said...

What's the old saying about blacks in job situations?

That you have to be twice as good to get paid half as much or get half the credit. The media will remind of him and us of this every day.

Anonymous said...

First of all, the people that are criticisng him of the Dick Morris, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh ilk, would have criticised anyone but their guy or "gal" who was in Obama's position. Seriously, we need to take what they say with such a grain of salt.

Secondly, Obama is living up to the perks of being president-elect. Fact of the matter is, Bush is packing up his things and will be hitting the road soon. This country got spoiled in the last 16 years only dealing with a transition of power once. We really forgot how it was done. I would have been mad at Obama is he hadn't picked a Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. He needed a fellow Democrat. Seriously, did anyone expect him to pick some random Republican or Independent to be his Chief of Staff!?!?!?!

Tell the eff ups at Fox to go suck a rotten egg!

It think its uber hypocritcal for them to be hollering about Obama being centrist when they good and damn well that that if McCain had been in office they would have picked some random Repub from the depths of conservatism.

It still remains to be seen what an Obama cabinet will look like and what his picks for Atty Generals will be. Then we will begin to see the depth of his judgment. I mean, the WH staff, aside from chief of staff and press secretary is almost at the bottom of the list of the most critical appointments. But, really critics are bemoaning the fact they are no longer in power and they don't have the Cheney mandate that Bush merely followed up by being his stepin' fetch it doll. Obama has already made plans to overturn many of the executive orders that Bush enacted (prolly via Cheney) and folks are saying that he's overstepping the boundaries.

NOOOOOOO, that's what happens when you win an election.

Big Man said...

Uppity

The critics I was talking about are not of the republican variety. These are progressive folks.

Mac Daddy Tribute Blog said...

Big Man, you got it. Many of the Republicans who badmouthed Obama are saying nice things now to try to get in his good graces and possibly get a chairmanship or position of status in his administration. It's progressives who are badmouthing him now, saying all the things Obama needs to do. What's so funny about it is that Obama is already putting together sets of people to address the very things they are talking about.

Progressives, chill out. Take some time off...Get a life.

Big Man, got you linked at daddyBstrong.blogspot.com




Raving Black Lunatic