Obama Whomps Osama!

by Rick Boettger

Change happens. The whole world is in happy shock that the leader of the free world, the last remaining superpower, has once again done something inspirational. Our self-righteous European cousins tip their hats in awe, admitting they couldn’t elect an Afro-heritage president, and didn’t think we could either. We did.

Better even than our friends’ respect is the disappointment of our enemies. Al Qaeda’s main website made a little-reported endorsement of John McCain, in recognition of George Bush’s success as a terrorist recruiter. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, “targeted” bombings that keep taking out wedding parties, our endless occupation of Iraq, have made us easy to hate. Bodies and money have flowed to the fanatics’ cause. Of course, that was not Cheney’s intention, and neither the Obama campaign nor Democrat 527s ran ads linking McCain to a vicious clip of Osama Bin Laden slamming America (while McCain-Rove, as I predicted, inundated Monday Night Football just before the election with repeated clips of Reverend Wright’s irrelevant rants). So what can the world, and more importantly, you and I in Key West, look forward to in an Obama presidency?

We’ve had a week to bask in the glow of making history, or, for my many sane and patriotic Republican friends, confront the disappointment of defeat. Now we have to build a future, putting both the joy and sadness of partisan divide in our democracy’s rear-view mirror as we pull ahead into an uncertain, and may I say, exciting, decade to come.

Americans now care more about their jobs and 401ks than terrorist attacks, so let’s look at our economy first. I didn’t want to say it during the election, but McCain was right when he said the words fatal to his campaign: “The fundamentals of the economy are strong.”

Our only problem is money, and, luckily, this is the one problem the government can fix. Remember that the real economy is not just money: it’s us, and the goods and services we create. Communist Russia—with a perfectly balanced budget, trade surplus, and stable ruble—lacked cars, refrigerators, airplane rides, and the people educated to make them, as does Thuggish Zimbabwe.

The only problem now is that our economically flustered world suffers from a rich EXCESS of all of the goods and services a “strong economy” is supposed to make. Every depression and recession in our history has been caused by the same thing: hard-working people make more stuff than our constipated money supply lets them buy. We have to bury cattle, shutter perfectly good factories, and idle millions of trained and willing workers because we created more real wealth than money. Think of the trigger for our current “housing crisis” as though you just arrived on a spaceship from a genius civilization. You see these humans built hundreds of thousands of marvelous shelters but were abandoning them, as well as new cars left empty on the lots. You ask why, and puzzle at the explanation:

“Well, those folks don’t have the pieces of paper with numbers on them that allow them to use the things they built. So we kick them out and let the shelters fall apart, empty.”

You’d think humans were nuts. Well, we’re not. Our government is currently following my book to the letter by planning to print money by the boatload and, damn the deficit, rebuild our infrastructure. Watch as we create jobs and resurrect stock prices and retirement accounts without triggering the bogeyman “hyperinflation” that the gold bugs constantly trumpet. In Key West, plan on refinancing your overpriced home at more favorable interest rates and possibly even a reduced principal.

Expect our tourist industry to recover as people have more money and the confidence to spend it again.

The best new tourism and increase in our homes’ value to hope for could come from decriminalizing our relations with Cuba. Obama’s stance on Cuba is consistent with his generally more open and friendly attitude towards the rest of the world. We have tried open-ended military occupation, breaking the Geneva conventions, and spiteful stubbornness (Cuba) with the result that the two nations that hate us most are developing nuclear weapons, Osama and Mullah Omar run free as the Taliban surge, and Cuba pointlessly erodes, just miles away from our generous embrace. More people will want to visit us and live here when we are only a legal half-hour plane ride or fun boat trip from Havana.

So let me click off some predictions, and check them out in four years. The economy will recover to less than 5% unemployment with 4% inflation and a Dow above 11,000. Key West housing will recover to 2004 prices and we’ll be able to visit Cuba. We’ll leave Iraq on schedule and they’ll muddle on, hopefully in three distinct federations, as stable as any other Islamic state, either as a democracy or theocracy. Our overstressed military will recover, meaning fewer suicides and atrocities, badly-aimed bombs, and stop-loss family destruction. Iran and North Korea will be denuclearized with a combination of force and much better diplomacy.

Afghanistan will be decentralized, and empowered warlords will keep a better peace over the Taliban than any number of US or NATO troops can. Best of all is that Barack Hussein Obama will crush Osama bin Laden in the court of world opinion, meaning even in Islamic theocracies that currently despise us. The so-called “End of History” after Communism died was supposed to mean that all the world agreed that liberal democracy ruled both physically and morally. Islamic fundamentalists disagreed, and their self-sacrificing suicide bombings challenged us on both grounds.

We’ve not only let them bomb us and thwart our 6-year democratic crusade in Iraq, but our blustering militarism and dismissal of international standards of military conduct has cost our nation dearly on moral grounds.

No more. In four years I expect one more attack on American soil, due, we will find out, to plans begun already, and once again laid at the feet of an FBI and CIA who have learned too little from the past and who will let us down again. But we will improve both bureaucracies under Obama and it will be Al Qaeda’s last gasp. Not only will our international friends love and respect us more, but our current enemies will hate us less. Fewer will give their fortunes and lives to attack a Great Satan now wearing the wings of an angel.

Ohmygosh, he’s gone overboard, you say. How naïve to believe any mere leader could make such a difference. But I think Obama can. He is different, and this time it’s not his skin color I mean. He was President of the Harvard Law Review. Our other Ivy leaders only got in and through because of family connections, and were so undistinguished that politics was their best option. ANY Harvard Law Review President is looking at an average of say $2 million a year for life, I’d wager.Michelle Obama took heat when she said people with her husband’s prospects rarely choose a political career, and we should consider ourselves lucky he did. But she was right.

Think locally. For every Shirley Freeman and Bill Verge who serve after great success in their professional and personal lives we lose ten Edward Pitts’s and John Hammerstroms who quite reasonably choose not to put themselves through the embarrassment of attaining public office. Normal people don’t. You have to be either a saint or sinner, and I back Barack as the former.

On a personal note, I want to linger one last day on what this election meant to me. No matter what you did on Nov. 4th, I’ll bet my day was ‘way cooler than yours, so you may want to stop reading now before you get jealous. I sat on my butt all day with my feet up next to my Obama sign at my local polling place on North Roosevelt, waving and talking to friends while wallowing in the political articles I’d missed while traveling. I did NOT walk my precinct, just as I had not phoned my neighbors, to the mild chagrin of our local Obama campaign professional.

I personally don’t like phone calls or people knocking on my door, so I don’t do that. I do like signs, parties, and sign holders, so I’ve done that since my initial donation to Obama the day his website first accepted money. I’m glad the kids did what I don’t do, however. It worked. I thanked the young strangers energetically standing up and waving Obama signs at the end of the day: “Your generation had a chance to change history and you grabbed it. Congratulations.”

They thanked me for comforting my demographic with my non-threatening posture. I went home to watch the results alone with Cynthia. The only person I thought of inviting to threaten our concentration on the moment was my old friend Calvin Allen. He is so used to his race getting screwed at times like this that only he could have comforted me if another polling fiasco blew up: “You see, Ricky,” he would have said with his resigned good humor, “it wasn’t ever going to happen.” But I’m glad I didn’t ask, because only my being alone when Virginia was called for Obama, and my heart raced for I knew he had won, let me realize who I needed to share the moment with. I got on my bike and found the street parade going through Bahama Village. Only when I parked my bike and collapsed with wet eyes did it sink in how much this meant to me.

The spontaneous march ended at the Elks Club. The only souvenir of the race I am saving is my receipt for the round of drinks I stood, clipped to my well-used Obama button.

Clayton and Norma Jean both got my hugs there. I felt the Village, my town, my country, and my world now glow with new light. I sat by myself and soaked it in. It was the best time of my political life. I hope we all now can be happy to go forward again as one truly united nation, of all races and parties, to become better than ever, together.

Comments

Good stuff (as usual) this week, Rick. I hope that you'll expand on some of the themes/memes you mention this week, like, for example, the effects of a relaxation of the Cuban Embargo.

The last time I felt this optimistic about a presidential transition was in 1976, and that didn't turn out all that well. Even so, Jimmy Carter is, in my opinion, the best ex-president we've ever had.

Keep on keeping on.