An Independent's View of President Obama - Published in the Centre Daily Times July 2010

I have been reading with interest and confusion recent news articles about how successful President Obama has been in implementing his agenda, and how he’s losing popularity because of it.  It seems that independent male voters no longer approve of his plans for our country.

Well, this independent male voter sees a president who is doing precisely what he promised to do.  Perhaps my fellow male independents didn’t listen to Obama’s speeches carefully when he was running for office.  As an independent – I paid a great deal of attention, and believed (and still do) that his way of doing things deserves a chance after many years of an earlier, failed approach.

After the worldwide economic trainwreck of 2008, our country, and most of the other wealthy countries of the world, quickly infused huge amounts of capitol into the global economy to head off a worldwide depression.  This seems to have worked, for now, but could not suddenly reset us back to the flush times of pre-2008.  The fact is, we won’t see times like that for many years, perhaps decades.  I’m not sure those times were all that great, considering that they were fueled by unsustainable credit spending frenzies and what that led us into.  Last week, an uneven, but worthwhile overhaul of our financial system became law – fulfilling one of Obama’s promises.

The earlier promise fulfilled – that of healthcare expansion to millions of our friends and neighbors who did not have it – seems to me to be a no-brainer.  And yet, so many of my fellow independents seem to disagree with this notion.  While I suspect that the budget estimates for the expanded health care plan are optimistic, I have no problem paying extra, if necessary, to help those of my fellow citizens in need.

I understand that the large concern in most independents, and nearly all Republicans, is the growing deficit.  It bothers me too.  However, although I’m certainly not an economist, it’s clear that our deficits are driven largely by millions of Americans who are jobless and are no longer paying taxes, and thousands of businesses who are losing or making less money, and also no longer paying taxes.  With the exception of the stimulus plan, the notion that Obama is spending us into the ground is simply not true.  Our outlays haven’t changed that much since the Bush years, and indeed most of our current outlays are holdovers from those years.

The long term deficit reduction plan – less war spending once we finally draw down from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, and the end of the tax cuts for the wealthy in 2011 – clearly must be augmented with more cost reduction measures.  However, in my opinion those measures must wait until the economy has healed more than it has so far.  Ripping off the bandages of support for the horrific economic wounds our country has suffered too early could drive us back into the days of early 2009 (and the 700,000 lost jobs each month we suffered back then).

So, to my fellow male independent voters, please remember what you voted for, and also remember that recovering from 2008 and 2009 quite simply takes more than just a few months, or even years.  Screaming at the quarterback who came into the game down several touchdowns for not immediately leading a historic comeback in a matter of minutes doesn’t help.  Instead, let’s keep open minds, be patient, and try our best to remember that we’re all Americans, and that we’re in this together.