"I forgot that I was hired to do a job for you and that it was just a temp job at that. I forgot that I had two hundred and fifty million people who were paying me to make their lives a little better and I didn’t live up to my part of the bargain. See there are certain things you should expect from a president. I ought to care more about you than I do about me…I ought to care more about what’s right than I do about what’s popular…I ought to be willing to give this whole thing up for something I believe in.”
- "Dave” The movie.
September 5, 2012
By: Linda Case Gibbons
So what have we heard from the Republican and Democratic National Conventions so far?
That both candidates’ wives say they love their husbands.That both candidates are "just like us.”
That Cory Booker is apparently back in Obama’s good graces.
That no one in the Republican Establishment knows the phone numbers of anyone in the Tea Party faction of their party.
That there are up and coming female stars in the GOP, all undeniably accomplished women, but that the political work horses for America, the gutsy ones such as Gov. Jan Brewer, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Gov. Sarah Palin are clearly considered pariahs.
That even though we women know there is no "war on women,” both candidates’ wives covered the non-issue by assuring you that they and their husbands are there for women.
But while I was listening to them, I kept getting distracted by the memory of Ted Kennedy’s attitude toward women as shown by his actions at Chappaquiddick, of Bill Clinton’s attitude toward women as shown by his actions toward Monica Lewinsky and of Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama’s attitude towards women by his support of late-term abortions and his resistance to efforts to protect unborn children born alive after failed abortion procedures.
But no one talked about that. Probably Sandra Fluke and President Clinton will address those issues tonight. And maybe Madeline Albright will reconsider her question as to why women would vote for Mitt Romney.
While I was listening to both sides, I kept wondering when either party would mention the 46.7 million people on food stamps, the 23 million unemployed or the more than15 million people on welfare.
But no one ever did.
Last night Michelle Obama reached into her bag of tricks to celebrate this "great country” when a scant four years ago she could recall only one moment of pride in her adult life and that was when her husband was elected.
She told us how poor Barack was, from his rusty car to his ill-fitting shoes– to show he’s just like us. She mentioned fondly Barack’s grandmother. Is that the one Obama says crossed the street "like all white people” when she saw a black man?
But she never explained how her husband was chosen, as was his father, to be plucked from obscurity and catapulted to the top of the heap. From poverty to Columbia to Harvard to the senate and to the presidency. We don’t know how that happened and she didn’t tell us.
She just told us he was poor, like you and me.
But we have grown used to being talked down to by politicians who don’t give a damn about anything but their careers and being lied to and insulted by Obama and his followers.
One honest moment did occur during the RNC when Clint Eastwood delivered an uncomfortable, but memorable, unscripted moment.
This former mayor of Carmel talked to an empty chair -- representing the man in the empty suit, and was the only one who stated the truth, "When somebody doesn’t do the job, you’ve got to let them go.”
So my question to the RNC and the DNC is when will you start to talk about the issues? When will you start to discuss the facts?
Is touchy, feely the best both parties can come up with?
I know why Obama cannot talk about issues. His record is abominable.
But what about Romney?
Instead of an entire political convention focusing on making him "more likeable,” why wasn’t the focus on attacking Obama’s record, asking Obama the hard questions?
Such as what the heck is going on with illegal immigration; what about the reprehensible, out-of-control behavior of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the attorney general?
We’d like to know if it bothers Mitt Romney that the man currently in the Oval Office is violating the rule of law on a daily basis, destroying our Constitution or the fact that freedom of religion is taking a beating on a slow, steady daily basis, too?
Is Romney as angry as we are that our states have been sued consistently by Obama, a distasteful practice that has become standard office procedure? We’d like to hear about it.
Is he as angry as we are about the president’s and attorney general’s war on voter ID? It’s an issue and it’s a fact. We’d like to hear about it.
And I’m puzzled why he doesn’t use the plethora of facts about the incumbent president, researched and articulated in "2016: Obama’s America?” Facts are neutral after all. Fight for the job, Mitt.
And haven’t you heard enough from Ryan and Romney and everyone else about Obama being "a good husband and father?” That "he’s a nice guy, but a bad president?”
Look up "nice” in Webster’s: "Pleasant in manner, good-natured, kind.” Does that sound like Barack Obama to you? Doesn’t it worry you that the Republicans think it does? Afraid of being called a racist by the Dems? You will be anyway.
And, finally, why didn’t Romney tell us why the GOP, who wants Tea Party votes, went to great pains to exclude the grassroots movement with behind-the-scenes rule and voter manipulation at the convention?
Maybe it is the same reason the Democratic leadership mysteriously removed "God” from the party platform and "Jerusalem” as the capital of Israel and then hastened to restore both with a questionable voting method -- to pacify parts of its rank and file.
We’ve already had four years of that kind of tactic with Obama: the "Pelosi you have to read it to know what’s in it” routine.
Unfortunately we all know we’ve seen Romney’s campaign before. It was the one run by John McCain in 2008, holding back, never taking off the gloves, constructively throwing the election. Didn’t the Republicans learn anything from that?
Yet the best we get at this momentous time in history from both political parties is no facts, no issues, just Michelle Obama talking about relationships and her husband admitting he’d get "misty” when she gives her speech at the DNC and Ann Romney talking about how self-effacing and modest her husband is.
Helen Gurley Brown would be proud of both women. Their comments would be appropriate in the late Brown’s Cosmopolitan magazine – but not in a political race whose outcome will define this country forever.
What we need is a discussion of facts. What we are owed is an incumbent president who talks about his record.
Unfortunately, all we get is pap: politicians who are afraid to make decisions or publicly take a position on anything. Common sense solutions are forgotten. Problems are never solved because they are too "complex.”
Over the Labor Day holiday weekend, the movie "Dave” was on TV. It’s about a man who takes the place of a president whom he resembles when that president is "indisposed” by his own bad behavior with a White House secretary.
But the best part of the movie is when Kevin Kline as the president realizes there are problems and does what a layman would do. He solves them.
In the movie there is a financial shortfall for a children’s center, so the president calls a cabinet meeting to find money for it. He pulls out a lined pad and pencil and proceeds to see where costs can be cut, line by line, governmental department by department.
Simplistic? But isn’t that what all Americans are doing today out of necessity? Cut back on that cell phone bill, that cable bill, wait a few months to replace a pair of shoes?
Because common sense solutions dictate: the best way to cut your bills is to first stop spending and then cut wherever you can.
I’m not privy to the government budget…I guess because there hasn’t been one in three years…but trimming the household budget gets results. A trillion is a lot of money to pay down, but you have to start somewhere and slow and steady does win the race.
And that’s what happens in the movie. Maybe our president could take a lesson.
Fly Air Force One less (it costs $180,000 an hour to fly). Cut out the trips to Sarah Jessica’s, David Letterman and those hops out to Hollywood to see Clooney.
Instead of travelling to Africa, invite Mandela up to Washington for a visit (half a million), cut out Spain and Hawaii (a half million each), have a "date night” at a local eatery and forget about the NYC scene (priceless), and admit Copenhagen was a poor decision. It cost a million dollars and Chicago didn’t get the 2016 Olympics anyway.
And next time Prime Minister Cameron visits, Obama’s chef could serve up some tasty home cooked hot dogs for the guys to munch on while watching March Madness on a White House TV instead of flying to Ohio to see the game.
At this point in history, we need a president with common sense like in the movie who takes out his lined pad, picks up his pencil and lists the debt we are in, item by item, who lists what needs to be changed for the good of the country. We want to hear "Drill, baby, drill” from him and a return to the rule of law that governs our country.
Unless.
Unless the GOP presidential candidate doesn’t see what we see. Unless he doesn’t fear what we fear. Unless he doesn’t recognize the transgressions of this president as we do.
But if that happens and neither party has the dedication to our country to step up to the plate, maybe it’s time to admit both political parties are out of touch, that they have become superfluous and that it has become painfully clear that there is no real difference between them.
Maybe it’s time to admit that when neither party cares anything about the welfare of our country it might be time for a third party.
Hold the line, America.