"Obama Hasn't Changed, but Where's the Country That Elected Him?"

[Pirate Smile]

Obama Hasn't Changed, but Where's the Country That Elected Him?

"Change you can believe in" on education, health, energy, climate change, Iraq, immigration, Wall Street, and Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama ran for president on all of that, he won on it, and now he's trying to get it done.
He hasn't changed. But the country that elected him has. We seem to have lost our collective nerve.

We've lost our confidence in ourselves, our government, and our institutions. We've lost our taste for boldness, our eagerness to experiment, our openness to the future. Enough of us are in hunker-down or angry-protest mode that Obama faces a struggle for every approval point in public opinion polls and on nearly every issue before Congress.
There is no question that this is the same person the nation elected with 53 percent of the popular vote and 365 electoral votes. His return to Cooper Union this week would have been a powerful reminder of that even if he hadn't reminded us himself in his speech.

At the same lower Manhattan venue two years ago, speaking then as a contender for the Democratic nomination, Obama sounded awfully concerned. We've lost our sense of "shared prosperity," he said, and allowed Wall Street to drag down Main Street. "We've excused and even embraced an ethic of greed, corner cutting, insider dealing" that threatens our long-term economic stability, he said. Foreclosures are rising and credit for students, states, and everyone else is drying up. We need, he said, new "rules of the road" for Wall Street.
Obama deserves credit for peering around corners and trying to think ahead, not just in 2008 but also in 2007, when he made a similar speech at Nasdaq, also in lower Manhattan. So Thursday's speech was the third in the series. He is almost boringly consistent. The same cannot be said for Americans. What has happened to us?

-snip-
The Great Recession coincided with the election of the country's first black president and an outpouring of anger on the right at his attempts to turn his campaign platform into law. That he is a Democrat means extra helpings of anger and mistrust. While both parties trust the government more when their party holds the White House, Pew says, that trend is more pronounced among Republicans. Right now, only 13 percent say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right, nearly as low as the 11 percent for Bill Clinton in June 1994.

The Pew poll makes clear that anger is not the prevailing sentiment across the land. Most people (56 percent) are more frustrated with the government than angry at it (21 percent), and 56 percent would be happy to see their kids work for the feds.
That said, the angry percentage -- made up of "Republicans, independents and others who lean Republican, and those who agree with the Tea Party movement" as Pew put it -- has doubled since 2000. That dynamic has driven the GOP's elected officials to the right and contributed to an increasingly confrontational tone, not just in protests or on cable but on the campaign trail and even within the Capitol.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/22/obama-hasnt-changed-but-wheres-the-country-that-elected-him/