I trust President Obama

[DirkGently]

27. It's the Complaint Desk. Doesn't mean the President IS every issue.

I frankly don't understand what the same knee-jerk partisans we see savaging every critic who merely exists during this time period think they are accomplishing. Sure, in the dumdum world of politics, particularly in this country, we expect the Presidency to address every ill, and try to hang every success or failure on that person.

But it's obviously more complicated than that. What the facts of the past few years have suggested is that the unprecedented Executive power Bush conceived has not been rooted out. It's well and good to trust Obama's motives or "believe" he wants what's right for the common good, but as citizens in a supposed democratic style of government, we are REQUIRED to do the opposite of what diehard partisans suggest -- put "the leader" in place and then simply defend.

Obama didn't build the NSA, or the spying program, and it is unrealistic to even imagine he would somehow dismantle all the horrors that followed on the Patriot Act and the gigantic, money-fueld surveillance boom that followed it.

It's reasonable for people to direct their questions and criticisms in his general direction. But at the end of the day, these are processes and technologies and now, an entire industry, over which even he does not exert control.

Ergo, it's not a personal attack on Obama to object to NSA spying or drone killings or what have you. He's not the source, or the solution, all on his own.