Answer to an excellent question

POSTED BY JHW22

In the comments of the previous post, one of our loyal readers, Vic, asked a question of Broadway Carl and me. How do we feel about the federal pay freeze? Rather than answering in a comment, I figured I'd make it a post. I'm feeling rather long-winded today and it's a point that deserves more discussion than I could provide in a comment. And I am over-due for a post anyway.

I am very supportive of Pres O, but I admit that there are moments when the doubting arguments start to make a dent - like today. What do you and Jennifer make of his salary freeze announcement? The perception that he always caves before he needs to is starting to get to me.

Vic used a key word, "perception". It is exactly THAT -- a perception. One of my consistent beefs is with the distortion of, selection of and analysis of the administration by our media. THEY decide what we know. THEY decide what details we receive. THEY decide what tone to set. THEY decide OUR moods. But honestly, none of us know how Obama got to the salary freeze decision. Because it was a surprise to us does not mean that it wasn't without a fight.

I understand the frustration people feel but I disagree with the premise that he caves before he tries. We have no clue what or with whom or for how long or how he discusses any issue. Just as he says he needs to get out of the fishbowl that is Washington, we need to realize that we are not looking into a fish bowl and seeing all there is to see. However, we are told to believe he just jumps without thinking or fighting. Why? Why do we continually go where we are led by the very people we criticize repeatedly for being, as Palin correctly states, "lame"? What about Obama in his speeches, in his politicking, suggests that the perception is the reality? Why don't WE do a better job demanding that the two match? Instead we allow the perception to become the accepted stance and then we fight against it. In many ways, we create our own enemies out of thin air. We waste energy and resources punching shadows instead of stopping and thinking and trying to grasp why decisions are made.

We aren't in the room, on the phone or at the other end of the Presidential Blackberry. WE don't know when he goes to the wall or when he realizes that flexibility is key to progress.

Secondly, Obama wasn't really a fighter in the campaign. I don't know how many times Dems would say, "I wish he'd....". We've done it to him since day one. Often I hear "We want the campaigner" back as if that Obama were a different person. He hasn't changed. His job has changed. I've always said that a campaign is a wedding but being President is the marriage. Weddings are about the drama and excitement, the memories and good vibes. But everyone who is married, or in a long-term relationship, hell, even a friendship, knows that the wedding ends when the bride and groom drive off with cans strung to their bumper.

When my husband and I were first married, we fought all the time and the fights may have appeared to be about stupid things but they were always about one thing at the root of it all: communication. And it's with persistence and bending and listening and changing that a marriage progresses into a relationship that makes both people feel involved and active and stable.

The problem is that we can't communicate with Obama in any direct way. A speech is one-sided. A press conference doesn't necessarily address our specific questions. We can't get in deep to understand and share with the very person we want to hold accountable for every decision made. It's truly not fair. We demand so much of a President but have no way of communicating with him. Instead, we rely on the media to do it for us and we get frustrated at him when the messenger tells us to.

Now the Republicans are threatening to block all legislation unless the Democrats add to the deficit by extending the tax cuts for the wealthy. It's hypocrisy in so many damn ways. We all know that. But what is the best way of dealing with them? Is being equally stubborn the answer?

The Democrats didn't care about the deficit much more than being able to call hypocrisy on the Republicans before. We don't care if we add to it if it creates stimulus. But by goddess we won't add to it if it benefits the wealthy!

Well, here's the deal. We need to be grown-ups. Do I want us to add to the deficit? NO. I have been one of the Democrats who wants to pay it down so we can free ourselves from debt to places like, oh, China. But do I think there is no solution other than black and white? No. I am realistic. There are options. We are as bad as the Republicans when we say "we won't compromise". Hell, that's what the Republicans said in their letter. We know that Murkowski said she would vote to repeal DADT because it's the right thing to do. But now she'd block it because she wants to play a game of extortion?

Do I like extortion? No. That's why I also don't like blanket statements like "Tell Obama not to compromise" especially when followed by some vague threat of primarying him with someone "more liberal".

WE MUST COMPROMISE. But compromise is a bad word these days. So from now on I'll just call it what it is: being a grown up. Progress is working toward a goal. It isn't being a stubborn ass (pun intended) refusing to climb a mountain. Progress is being the bigger person and seeing that giving an inch gains a mile. Who gives a fuck about the inch when we have a mile?!

Priorities and perspective. We need them. We also need to step back from our knee-jerk emotional responses and see that big picture our President is always seeing and trying to show us. It's on us to stop demanding specifics and start thinking about what is more important: the result or how we get it. I want results and we are getting them from President Obama. How we get them is water under the bridge.

Back to the initial point about the salary freezes, the best I can articulate it is this: we have been creating private sector jobs. We have been losing public sector jobs. I would rather we freeze salaries than lay people off. And yes, some workers will be frozen at a pay that is too low already. But that is better than being without a job or having to get a similar paying job with zero health benefits.

I am constantly remind myself of four things:

1) Am I being a hypocrite? If so, reconcile it with integrity and honesty.

2) Do I believe the source or the spin? If not, decide what I think.

3) Read, watch or learn two positive things for every negative thing I read.

4) Obama IS the person I voted for. He IS doing the exact job I expected him to do. The frustrations are valid but irrelevant to the bigger picture of a nation consisting of opposing views and opinions and interpretations of fact. Follow Obama's lead on this because he's a grown up and I need to try to act like a grown up myself.

Oh, and I should probably add that we all define "fighting" differently. My idea of the President fighting may not be his idea or your idea or a Republican's idea. People need to stop clinging to semantics on this issue.