Obama Dreami'n d'apres The Mamas and The Papas

drawing by marguerita

Stopped in to a church I passed along the way.
Well I got down on my knees
(got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray.
(I pretend to pray).
You know the preacher likes the cold.
(preacher likes the cold).
He knows I'm gonna stay.
(knows I'm gonna stay).
Obama dreamin'

(lyrics excerpt) ........ after a decade in which two true national catastrophes, a wasteful war and a near-ruinous financial collapse, were both in part byproducts of the ease with which our leaders bamboozled us, we can’t so easily move on.

This can be seen in the increasingly urgent political plight of Barack Obama. Though the American left and right don’t agree on much, they are both now coalescing around the suspicion that Obama’s brilliant presidential campaign was as hollow as Tiger’s public image — a marketing scam designed to camouflage either his covert anti-American radicalism (as the right sees it) or spineless timidity (as the left sees it). The truth may well be neither, but after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out.http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/opinion/20rich.html?emc=eta1

Now, as his first year in office draws to a close, the man who campaigned on the “fierce urgency of now” is confronting a painful reality: the not-so-fierce urgency of next year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/weekinreview/20stolberg.html?emc=eta1