In Retrospect

It isn't new that some people out there are shouting about President Obama being un-American or anti-American, but it has become even more prevalent recently in light of the President's decision to place himself on the unpopular side of several issues. These include his backing of the U.S. Justice Department's decision to fight the Arizona immigration law, the health care bill, the stimulus package, and his ban on deepwater oil drilling.

My personal feelings about these issues aside, there are clearly deep flaws in the thinking that Mr. Obama's positions make him anti-American in any way. Most significantly, it should be noted that what is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular. The President's positions might not be popular today, but that doesn't mean that he is making the wrong decisions. So often, the long-term implications of the actions of a President are not seen until much, much later, even far beyond his term. It looked like a fine idea back in the 1980s for President Reagan to authorize the sale of weapons to places like Iran and Afghanistan, and to give military training to people like Osama bin Laden. That worked out real well for us, didn't it? Conversely, it didn't look too good to some folks back in the 1930s when President Franklin Roosevelt spent lots of government dollars to fund some public work programs that would allow people to be employed and earn an honest wage. It was more than a decade before the country started to see the positive effects of this course of action.

My point is, why are we so averse to giving Mr. Obama the benefit of the doubt here? I mean, he's a pretty smart dude, and he's got a lot of other smart people working with him. Maybe, just maybe, he knows what he's doing here. Maybe he's a little more qualified to be making these decisions than your average person. Maybe we should consider that he's more well-informed on these issues than the guy standing in line at Wal-Mart, struggling with the complex tasks of paying for his microwave burritos while trying not to drool on himself. The President might be in the minority, but perhaps the minority has a better idea about what's good for the country than do the drooling masses. Again, I'm not saying positively that the President is right on all counts here. What I am saying is that we did elect this guy President of our country, maybe we should try to see what impact his decisions actually have before we do crazy things like calling him anti-American. I know that everyone and everything in our society today demands instant gratification, but the truth is, nothing gets fixed overnight. So often, we don't appreciate what our leaders accomplish until they are long gone, and then it's too late, our impatience has already bested us. So let us remember the lessons about what is popular and what is right, so that we do not make knee-jerks out of ourselves.