Letter to Daily News, 9/10/10

This was a letter I wrote to the Daily News in Bowling Green KY and published on September 10, 2010:

Your Sept. 1 editorial “Hope and Change Was Disappointing” sounded wearily like the constant drumbeat of automatic opposition that has come to characterize the Republican Party.

The editorial’s language – “ram a stimulus package down the American people’s throats,” “Chicago-style politics” – came straight from GOP talking points rather than thoughtful analysis of current events.

If “the country is angry” as the Daily News stated, it is from the constant stream of Beckian diatribes, official GOP revisionism and death panel and birther nonsense designed to appeal to people’s fears rather than their aspirations. It is also due to President Barack Obama’s lack of vigor in standing up for his policies. Whether his energy was sapped by the health care bill debate or the pro forma Republican stonewall of opposition, Obama needs to buck up and be as motivating in the Oval Office as he was on the campaign trail.

Someone should send Obama a DVD of “The American President.” In that movie, Andrew Shepherd refused to answer allegations from his political opponents and became defined by them since, like the real-life conservative blowhards and angry tea partiers, the public only heard their voice.

Obama needs to forcefully advocate his policies so the public knows his vision, not Fox News Channel’s take on his vision. And he needs to tell the tea party movement that, in Shepherd’s words, “your 15 minutes are up.”