’08 election
An Open Letter to President Obama
Yes, the honeymoon is over. The tide of optimism that swelled with your inauguration has dwindled into the usual political bickering, which is kind of sweet, because that means one thing’s official: You’re Our President. Really and truly.
But I’ve gotta tell you. The stack of Esquire magazines in my bathroom got re-arranged, and, unbeknownst to me, I was looking at the cover headlines from an Oct 2006 copy: “Think the Middle East is a Mess Now? Wait Till Egypt Blows”. What? I thought. Cognitive dissonance. What could go wrong with Egypt that Our President couldn’t head off at the pass? Didn’t he just choose Egypt as the venue for his major speech to the Muslim world? Wouldn’t that be the base, then, for his attempts to reach out and begin to smooth all of the fissures of our last administration? In fact, isn’t the Egyptian president visiting the White House tomorrow?
Then I saw the next headline: “Keys to the ’06 and ’08 Elections”. Ohhhhhhhh………sigh of relief as I realized the issue was an older one. But it brought back the old familiar awful frustration of having a leader for this country that does not do a decent job of representing the people in it, and isn’t really even trying. And pinning so much hope on the future, so that in those ’06 and ’08 elections, this wrong might be righted, if only we could find the person for the job.
So here we are, Mr. President. Finally having met that future exactly the way so very many of us had hoped, rendering the ominous headlines like the ones on Esquire Oct. 2006 nugatory. Thank you, Mr. President, for taking the job, and thank you as well for ruling with your very sharply attuned brain, and not your bloated and hard-of-hearing “gut”. I am proud to have you as President, and further, I am also proud that you are the Little One’s president as well. Talk about hope for the future.
Very Sincerely,
Erin Nieto
