Review/Preview

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, January 7, 2010

As we take down our old calendars and put up new ones, it is important to pause briefly and take a look back at the old, worn-out pages and review the triumphs and the tragedies that mark every passing year. Then as we look at the new, uncluttered pages, we should take another brief pause and consider what we may expect to see in our memories when we look backward from the last day of this year.

What did we see in 2009 that should help us to live better in 2010?
First of all, we saw a new political landscape develop before our eyes. As if every other presidential election was a minor, ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, every leap-year event, we were told over and over and over again, the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama was a historic event. Not only was he ushering in an era of hope and change, he would be doing so with his party controlling both houses of Congress; and the people of the United States – even the people of the whole planet – were anxiously awaiting this new era with great anticipation.

Well, as we tear off the final page of the 2009 calendar, we see less anticipation and more anxiety. The popularity slide of this president is as historic as his inauguration was supposed to be. At the time of the joyous swearing in he enjoyed an approval rating over 80% and the Nobel committee apparently assumed that accomplishment alone was worthy of their Peace Prize. So, the community organizer moved his charm and oratorical skills into the oval office, only to find that being the chief executive demanded more than being merely charming. The most recent Gallup poll, taken in December, showed less than 47% of the people polled approved of his job performance and the numbers for his Democrat Party partners, Pelosi and Reid, barely make it above 20%.

At this rate, 2009 will go down in history as the year of the Great Disappointment. This Congress has spent over 10 months trying to write a Health Care Reform Bill and only by using last-minute wheeling and dealing and shameless vote-buying, they were finally able to garner the minimum number of votes to get it off the floor. Of course, it is still far from a final version and it is even farther from gaining popular support of the people. In fact, this legislation holds the peculiar place of being the most far-reaching, life-altering, tax-increasing, budget-busting bundle of bureaucratic regulations in our nation’s history – and it is being pushed forward despite the overwhelming public outcry against it.

Other domestic issues continued to plague us, even though Obama assured us his stimulus package – which he assumed the unprecedented act of signing while still wearing the title of President-elect – would staunch the bleeding of jobs and right the ship before she sank further. Well, the job losses continued and the ship still has not stopped taking on water. No matter how the media tries to sell us the idea that the recession has ended, each new indicator tells us another story.

The only bright spot economically is that the worldwide recession has contributed to a drop in oil prices, with the current price near $50 a barrel. However, this administration and Congress did not take the opportunity to exploit newly discovered reserves of domestic gas and oil, so if the global economy rebounds, we can expect to see $150 a barrel prices again and all the talk about solar and/or wind power will not move our cars or heat our homes.

2009 did not bring us any new sense of security or worldwide respect either. No matter how much charm Obama poured upon the leaders of Iran, North Korea, China, Venezuela, Russia or even the Olympic Committee, his words did not seem to move them. Iran still threatens the world with its nuclear ambitions, North Korea fired off missiles to mar our Independence Day celebrations, Russia has announced plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons and Putin has rejected Obama’s pleas to apply pressure on Iran; China is laughing at our suggestion that they limit their greenhouse emissions, while reminding us that we owe them over a $1 trillion.

Obama assured us that if we just apologized enough and bent over (bowed) far enough, the world would smile and we could all share a Coke and a song. But the fact is that the world is not a community and it can’t be organized. Obama finally seemed to be getting it by the time he accepted the aforementioned Peace Prize. He acknowledged then that evil does exist and war is sometimes necessary. He also finally re-introduced the Terrorism word back into the White House-approved vocabulary when he addressed the Christmas attack that was foiled at the last minute by heroic plane passengers.

So, it is with some hope that I look forward to 2009. I hope that the lessons learned by our president (and he is our president) will bear fruit in the next 12 months. I hope he sees that the people who go to tea parties and speak up at town hall meetings are his constituents also. I hope he sees that the people who plot to blow up planes are sworn enemies of our nation and not merely criminals.