Open Letter to the President

Dear Mr. President,

I need a dream to look forward to, a promise I can invest in, a word that I can stand on for all that is coming out of Congress is dramatic drool. During your campaign you energized my imagination. Could we get back to an America where science is restored and melts away the fog of ignorance; where health care is viewed as a right rather than a profit center; where the financial markets are disciplined by re-installing the constraints my father and grandfather put in place to curb selfish profiteering; where a college education is valued and affordable; and where the environment is treated with reverence rather than something to leverage. You painted such a picture and my hopes skyrocketed.
Mr. President, after you took office, it seemed a veil of compromise was thrown over this vision. The shroud was, perhaps, inadvertently dropped by the tactics you are using. A case in point: your health care town hall meeting. In concept a good idea, go and meet the people and discuss the issues. It worked for President Roosevelt, it ought to work now. But there is a huge horsefly in the ointment - this is not the Roosevelt era. The Republican Party has morphed into some kind of rage while the Democratic Party has fizzled into the yes-no-well-maybe party; the Internet has allowed venomous individuals to band together; and talk radio has even called you a Nazi. While you are speaking to hundreds of people in town halls, talk radio and Rupert Murdochians are speaking to millions… daily! You have delivered the occasional well reasoned argument while Sarah Palin and talk radio have conjured up the Boogey Man. Make no mistake, Karl Rovian tactics have been unleashed and your well reasoned arguments have been toasted and served up with Palin gobbledygook. You may be able to claim a debate point with the elite, but who the hell cares when Grandma is on the death list. And don’t forget Grandma has a decade or three of voting left.
Mr. President, I need you to slay the Sarah Boogey Man that is running riot in the health care debate. I need you to explain to me what your vision of health care reform is. I need you to put it to me in simple words, in several ways, that will allow me to build a vision I can invest in. But, Mr. President, you know that the Boogey Men is not going to go quietly back under the bed. I am thinking several Presidential addresses to us commoners would do the trick. In these addresses you need to create realistic scenarios, say, a fifty year bread winner, who has just lost his job, has no health insurance and his wife has cancer. Explain how, under our current system, a very real Boogey Man would raise Hell with this family. I need you to explain how your vision of healthcare reform will put this Boogey Man down. In short, Mr. President, you need to do what you have not done - create a ground swell of citizen support for healthcare reform.
Put another way, Mr. President, what is lacking is leadership. It’s that funny thing that gives people a dream to hope for, a vision to guide them, a promise for the future and a word that they can stand on. But, please don’t confuse leadership with consensus building, the art of carefully crafting compromises that, at the end of the day, fall short and no one is proud of. So, Mr. President, I want you to man-up and lead me. That is your job and it is what I expect.

Sincerely,
Stephan Fowler