PRAGMATIST: a person who is oriented toward the success or failure of a particular line of action, thought, etc

As his popularity ratings have slipped to lower levels, President Obama has been portrayed more and more as a pragmatist. Those two factors reflect each other better than one might think at first glance.

If The President were interested primarily in being popular, he would undertake a path of activity which would not rile the emotions of people. He would avoid difficult decisions and do only those things which made people feel good. There is precedent for this kind of presidency, and I'm sure it has been pointed out to President Obama numerous times by nervous party leaders. It clearly is an easier way to go, and the results...on a short-time basis...can be affirming.

But that is not the course the President Obama has chosen. Consequently, the pragmatist label has emerged. He is someone who wants to "get things done." Pragmatically, it is clear that there is a small window for a President to act within. In this case, the window is defined by the ability to garner 60 Democratic votes in the Senate. Most political commentators indicate that the likelihood of there being that block of Democratic voters in the Senate after the 2010 elections is minimal.

As a result, there is a pragmatic rush to achieve specific platform issues while the possibility of passage still exists. There have been lots of critical comments directed toward President Obama for his timetables on Health Care legislation, for instance. Some depict this as a personal trait of impatience on his part. To the contrary, President Obama can be a very patient person...sometimes to a fault. But the legislative clock is ticking and if he wants Health Care reform to take place in his administration it has to be accomplished prior to the 2010 elections. That is a practical...pragmatic...act on his part.

The emotional quotient to be assessed in this pragmatic climate is the degree to which pragmatism about transformational legislation can be tolerated by the public. It requires a prioritization of his agenda...and clearly Health Care Reform is high on that list.

There was no question that economic stability ranked even higher on that agenda, and The President acted quickly and forcefully in bringing about huge financial support for a rapidly-failing economy. There is almost no debate among credible economists that the activity he undertook was necessary...vital...to preventing a repeat of the Great Depression. The larger elements of his economic plan...undertaken within days of his inauguration...seem to have been successful in preventing that disaster.

Some of the related issues, such as job creation, have been too slow in recovering, leading many to criticism about "big government" as the solution to our problems. I think that this is a process depending heavily upon industry's taking the same kind of bold steps toward recovery, risking at the same level as he has required the government to risk. So far, I haven't seen that activity emerging from an overly-cautious private sector. Evidently pragmatism is not as forth-coming when the money has to come directly from one's own corporate pockets.

I am confident that Health Care Reform of one kind or another will be enacted soon. It still is difficult to predict what its final form will look like. And it is clear that the government will continue to be fully engaged in working to bring about economic stability.

The question before President Obama is how far his pragmatic approach to governance can go. The shuffling of his agenda may require a very pragmatic response: regain the confidence of his Party and the American people. It would appear to me that it is time for some smaller, emotionally-satisfying successes by this Administration to which they can point in the 2012 elections. That, from my perspective, is a very pragmatic plan.


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CONCOMITANT: existing or occurring with something else, often in a lesser way; accompanying; concurrent

The climate has been rough in Congress this past year. 2009 may go down as one of the most contentious, partisan demonstrations of congressional governance in history. Granted, there were no shootings, wrestling matches, or physical demonstrations such as have occurred in the past. However, the daily (hourly) fighting and mud-slinging has been horrendous. Maybe it's due to the presence of instant media, but for some reason it seems worse than ever.

My take on it is biased, but I believe there is a not-so-subtle conspiracy among the Republicans to destroy the Obama administration. President Obama came into office with a promise to bring a more non-partisan atmosphere to the legislative process. He had the credentials and the "capital" to pull it off. But if he did that, it would ensure re-election and a successful era for the Democrats. It is my suspicion that the Republicans planned (and carried out) a systemic process of destroying that possibility.

The progressive agenda of President Obama has given the Republicans everything they needed to carry out their plan. Controversial legislation in the areas of finance, foreign policy and health care have been ripe for the chipping away procedures employed by those who oppose Obama and his administration.

What has resulted is an atmosphere of negativity. Legislation has been delayed, undermined, mis-represented, and near-fatally injured. That is a serious blow to the American people, but there is a concomitant result which may be more destructive: the American people have lost all faith in the Congress and its ability to function. The result of that perception has the potential of being even more dangerous than the failure of the individual legislation.

The American public is fragile. Economic failures at the level of Wall Street have played havoc with personal income, home ownership, employment, and investment. The usually "upbeat" nature of American attitudes has been exchanged for pessimism, negativity, and fear. It is unlike us, and we don't wear that clothing very well.

Granted, the Obama administration asked a lot of Congress in 2009. To be supportive meant adopting a whole new set of standards and credentials which were foreign to most of the opposition party. Those who are grounded in conservative (small "C") methods of legislation have been asked to expand their horizons and embrace methods of governance which they are unable (or unwilling) to adopt. Instead, they have chosen to undermine the legislative agenda of the Administration by carping and character assassination, labelling the President as "socialist." The fragile public has picked up on this response, leading to a concomitant loss of faith in an Administration which is committed to securing stability and restoring strength to American finance and Main Street and County Road commerce. It may take decades to overcome this concomitant damage.

It would be wonderful to think that 2010 would demonstrate a turn-around in this mind-set, and that a more bi-partisan approach to governance would prevail. But 2010 is an election year. The liklihood of that about-face is limited or even impossible to envision.

Photo Credit: www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/senate-clima...
Dictionary Credit: Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

AFFLUENZA: extreme materialism which is the impetus for accumulating wealth and for overconsumption of goods (Dictionary.com)

Let's do a little current events review to begin:

$ Tiger Woods finds that being the first billionaire athlete isn't everything it was supposed to be.

$ Sarah Palin resigns as Governor of Alaska to go on a highly-compensated lecture tour.

$ Jason Bay rejects a Red Sox offer for $15M per year.

$ Banks pay back the US government the billions they were loaned so they can go back to paying their executives billions of dollars in bonuses.

That which these four news items have in common is affluenza, the pursuit of massive wealth. The word is a merger of two familiar words: affluence, meaning wealth; and influenza, a persistent and potentially dangerous disease. It may seem like a strange pair of words to combine, but when you get there...it works.

Affluenza is not restricted to the four news items with which I began. It is rampant in varying forms, even in our struggling economy. That is what makes it all strange. Here we are in the midst of an economy that almost tanked, in which at least 10% of our employable population is unemployed, and when people become homeless because their homes are taken away because they can't pay the mortgage. There may not be a fiscal depression in our country, but a huge number of the people of the United States are emotionally depressed.

And, in the midst of this, newsworthy people are amassing huge windfalls. That fact is not being ignored by the populace. Sports heroes are falling from grace, not only by their indiscretions, but by their images. Political wannabees are being looked at with a second look. And CEO's and bank Trustees are portrayed in the media as villains. Affluenza (many times at the expense of the general public) is the source of public anger:

$ Charities lose millions by Tiger Woods taking a sabbatical to try to repair his crumbling marriage.
$ The Republican Party shifts further and further to the right, leaving moderate Republicans behind.
$ Try to purchase a ticket to a Red Sox game. In order to pay out huge salaries, the cost of a ticket to America's Favorite Pastime is increasingly inaccessible to the average baseball fan.
$ Try to get a loan for a small business, or try to get your mortgage rate reduced.

The demonstration of affluenza is directly tied to public stress, and this is not a good time for that stress. The result is cynicism, which is not a good emotion when it is important to be about the process of rebuilding our economy.

Throughout this fiscal mess we have been experiencing, I have found myself increasingly angry with the Wall Street firms and the banks. The government has gone way, way, way out on a limb to secure them, potentially endangering the political future of the President and those in Congress. But the response of the financial industry has been tepid at the most. Clever schemes to protect its disposable wealth at a time when the nation's economy is crumbling have been nauseating. Over and over I hear commentators use the phrase "Wall Street just doesn't get it!" That's not a simplistic statement...I think it is a profound statement of reality.

At a time when the banks and Wall Street could be heroes, they have chosen instead to be scoundrels. Is it any wonder that people question the viability of capitalism? I'm not ready to give up on capitalism, but those responsible for maintaining a capitalistic equilibrium must join the effort. Their economic narcissism is offensive and potentially disastrous.

Photo Credit: newsweek.com