Change has come to the national debate

Change has come to the national debate
By Georgie Anne Geyer
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
November 26, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped1126geyernov26,0,4782020.column


This Thanksgiving, coming in the good year of Our Lord 2009, wears a cloak of indecision as it strolls around these gray city streets, topped off by a droopy hat of disappointment and a scarf of desolation. This Thanksgiving, you might say, is not exactly a "Yes, we can" holiday.

The predominant hues are gray and brown; the voices, hushed to whispers. Will the cranberries even be red this year? The Republicans are in a festive mood, happy to be full-on attacking the new president. But even some of President Barack Obama's own Democrats and independents are critical -- they feel that their savior/president has let them down by not being more activist in pursuit of his campaign promises.

With your permission, of course, I will once again defy popular suppositions. For while the free-floating disappointment with President Obama, not the thinker but the actor, is all too real, the fact is that in less than one short year, he has wrought change so profound in the American scene that one would barely recognize today's country compared to that of 2006 and 2007.

First consider health care and insurance. Do you recall ever hearing anything about health during the George W. administration (except in their beloved gruesome battlefield hospitals, of course)? Obama has made health into the subject du jour; the papers and TV are full of it; individual cases of insurance denial are being taken apart, bit by bit. Many Americans have noticed that the health insurance companies have not dared to tell "their" story -- when one did come into the news, it was because it had turned down a desperately ill insured man needing around-the-clock care, calling him a "dog." So much for the moral stature of the insurance companies we trust with our lives!

Next consider Wall Street. The negative coverage of the big brokerage houses and their outrageous gaming of the system has become so clear to Americans over this last year that no one could expect them to reclaim their former place of respect in our society. While there is still a lot of questioning on whether the administration's enormous stimulus package will rescue the economy and bring enough funds to small business, the undeniable fact is that the administration has acted, and acted swiftly. Now the discussion is about how the nation responds when its economy is failing.

And finally, consider our foreign policy. Under George W. Bush, and especially in the hands of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, all three of whom seemed to get a Viagra punch out of insulting our allies and trying to wipe off the face of the Earth anyone they didn't particularly like, America had sunk to its lowest place in the world order for many years. Obama has changed that.

But here, as in all the areas he is trying to change -- to clean out, to fumigate, to restart on a more moral level, to reconstruct -- he is immediately up against the walls of the past. How do you reduce our deficit when billions of dollars are promised to Iraq and Afghanistan? How do you plan to leave those countries when our soldiers and their families have so much invested in the success of those wars? How do you undo what your "thoughtful" predecessors couldn't deal with and just left to you?

One can sympathize with critics who think the president is saying a lot but isn't doing enough. It has been a year since his election, and many feel the time has come to forget blaming what he inherited, to move beyond establishing a new tenor among the American people, and to begin acting.

The passing of the health care bill -- and it will pass -- will be a first step, and that will be a refreshingly clear victory for Obama & Co. The stimulus program was always doomed to be imprecise -- and it still will be. As to foreign policy, although there was a danger that America would be seen as kowtowing to "banker" China on this last trip, we are still not at the point at which power passes to the Orient. With the emphasis on the "still not." We are rapidly approaching the point where the until-now beloved President Obama will find that changing the tenor of the discussion will not be enough. And therein lies his next challenge: to actually act, and not bow to circumstance.

Universal Press Syndicate Goergie Anne Geyer is a syndicated columnist based in Washington.

Gigi_geyer@juno.com