1115.org

Barack Obama made a fine little speech towards the end of Saturday night’s Democratic debate:

And, you know, so the truth is actually words do inspire. Words do help people get involved. Words do help members of Congress get into power so that they can be part of a coalition to deliver health care reform, to deliver a bold energy policy. Don’t discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens.

What caught my attention, for some reason, was that last statement: “… because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens.”

I could have sworn that in November 2006 the American people were determined to have something happen. I could have sworn that the Democratic Party claimed to know exactly what it was. And I’m willing to swear that next to nothing actually has. Happened, I mean.

One take on that is George Bush’s intransigence, coupled with the Republicans’ suicidal loyalty to the discredited policies of a thoroughly unpopular president. It is because Bush will not compromise with the Democrats on anything, including the time of day, and because Senate Republicans will filibuster anything that moves, that nothing has actually happened.

But then I scratch my head, and I start asking myself a series of questions:
1) Did the American people desperately want, desperately need, something to happen?
2) Is there a leader in the Democratic camp who claims to have unusual powers of persuasion, the holder of a Ph.D. in compromise, essentially?
3) Did that leader have a duty to step up and apply his powers of persuasion and compromise to the pressing problems of the nation over the last year?
4) Did he? Step up, I mean.
5) Is there any good reason why a leader with the presumptive power to bring the nation together would sit in the wings and just wait, watching the nation go swiftly down the tubes, instead of stepping forward to work his magic in the service of the nation?
6) Is there any good reason why this leader would not use the power of his words when the power of his words was clearly required?
7) Is there any good reason why such a leader would say (to himself, and to voters across America): “I can solve the problems of this country, but I’ll do it only if you elect me President”?
8) If he has magical powers of persuasion, of bringing people together, shouldn’t these powers work even now, and not only if he’s sitting in the Oval Office wielding a big stick?

Sigh! So many questions, so few answers. Just yes and no, really. I scored it “yes” for the first three, “no” for the next four, yes again for the last question. As for Barack Obama, he struck out all eight times.

The fact of the matter is that either you have the ability to bring people together, or you don’t. Obama claims he does. He claims that as the biggest reason why we should be inspired by his words to make him our next president. But in a political climate where our biggest problem has been the unbridgeable distance between Democrats and Bush-and-Bushies, he has done absolutely nothing to actually demonstrate his much-touted power to bring people together. The proof of the pudding could have been in the eating, but he stayed out of the kitchen. Still wants the chef’s job, though.

Talk is cheap, even fine talk. And when the times cry out for action, cheap fine talk is obscene.

So just think on that for a while. This man who has been obscenely AWOL over the last year wants to be president. Do you want him to be president too?