I had to chuckle upon seeing, in the results of a poll here with the option:
* I want the guy I voted for, not the current Chief Executive
that the plurality of participants -- about 41% -- chose that option above all the others.
I know - they were being metaphorical or snarky or hyperbolic. Most were trying to say they voted for candidate Obama but not for President Obama whose cabinet is run by Wall Street alumni and who hasn't mentioned the disastrous financial consequences of repealing the Glass-Steagall - the topic of the diary and poll - since the campaign.
But does it matter if it's metaphorical when the bottom line is we don't have the president they thought they voted for? Did we want someone who'd spend trillions on guilty financiers and their bonuses, while only rescuing 10,000 mortgages? Who'd move Guantanamo to Illinois but continue indefinite detention without charges? Who'd fight in court to expand the Bush policy on state secrets and argue against equality?
Here's another poll: let's take responsibility, or figure out what happened.
In context, it was a poll on how there are still no real financial regulations - like the Glass-Steagall Act - which Obama, who offered to replace it with something even stronger, has been silent and now a year after the economic catastrophe caused by its repeal.
Like the nomination of proven disaster Ben Bernanke for the Federal Reserve - it's hard to see a practical or a political benefit to rehiring someone who insisted in summer 2008 that the economy was fine.
Obama's decision has so far benefitted David Vitter, Jim Bunning, Jim Demint, Bernie Sanders, who used logic to put a hold on Bernanke's nomination - though it's hurt Obama and his party.
Of course, it goes much further than finance. Obama is a leader. For instance has worked with every branch of government since April - the DoJ, the Pentagon, the Congress and the Supreme Court - to change the Freedom of Information Act so photos of Americans abusing people with broomsticks can legally remain hidden. But is that what we voted for?
The poll asked:
"When will Obama provide financial leadership on regulation?"
and I suspect those who actually didn't vote for Barack Obama were the 30% who answered "Never".
More tellingly, only 1 out of 130 respondents thought Obama had made a reasonable change of heart about the Glass-Steagall Act that protected us Americans from risk-taking by banks for 66 years until 1999. I don't think he has responded to Cantwell and McCain's bipartisan proposal to reinstate it.
Without giving Obama a pass, let's have a grown up discussion and even take some responsibility ourselves.