Tonight, President Obama will take his final walk to the speaker’s podium; I expect that he will prescribe a nationwide antidote, his personal assessment of his seven years and the agenda for his last. He will take the opportunity to remind his opponents of their culpability, the nation of its flaws and the world of its dangers.
Meanwhile I’m thinking of two specific reference points: Denver, Co., Invesco Field, August 2008 and the other, President John F. Kennedy. I recall the euphoria and promise of both; Obama accepting the DNC’s nomination, the attendance so massive the event had to be moved from the smaller Pepsi Center. The intoxicating environment fueled by the hope of a people’s hunger; could this truly be the one who could lead a restorative campaign to revitalize a Nation and its representative process?
He was able to merge the fatigue and hopes of a nation, and much of the world, into a kinetic sense of promise that sent shockwaves throughout the entrails of Congress. Truly, if I hadn’t read his book, I would have voted for him too. Either way, no American with a conscience wants to see their President fail; he/she is, after all, not a Democratic or a Republican President, they are an American President. In the end, he confused divisive ideology with leadership and outcome with missed opportunity and there’s simply not enough time left for him to correct it.
JFK, in many ways was very similar – and if you focus on distinction of race then you are clearly missing the point and typical of the divisive source that polarity fosters – however, with a terminal effect suspending the best of all possibilities; what could possibly have been. He was, in my historical analysis, the last (at least so far) truly American President.
“American” in the sense that his family’s wealth afforded him the ability of largely escaping the bias political finance often extracts. Kennedy, even in his shortened term, was able to cross-over the public divide and ultimately gain broad public appeal primarily due to his ability to understand the difference between leadership and ideology. So much promise from which opportunity was never to be fully known and for this reason the killing of JFK continues to reverberat deeply with those who still feel the Promise imbedded in this Nations DNA; a scar that simply will not heal, not yet.
I find that the SOTU remains a lingering mockery; it has evolved into a coldly calculated tool where division is magnified and agendas are purely and purposefully political and though it is not, anytime soon, likely that the franchise will be brought to an end, I do hope that some future President will set an entirely new paradigm in place. Perhaps a sit-down with the American public. A fulcrum from which the leadership capacity of this Nations Chief Executive moves from being a political ideologue to that of a true leader determined to advance the higher ideals for the benefit of the entire Nation.
Polarity is an anathema to true leadership which, by its very nature, requires a type of vision that transcends limitation and voids divide; it is always a compelling force greater than the obstacles before it and suspends the status quo of mediocrity. Presently, the nations political order continues its vise-like grip on the nation simply because the American public has been conditioned to view its future through the bi-polar lens of enforced polarity and this is not the foundation upon which the country’s system of government was built.
We, the People, must express our intolerance for being tolerant and make certain that when you vote to think about your choices and not act upon the craven impulse of indulgent polarity. No more missed opportunities or the scars of unfulfilled promise. I am certain we can do this; I am absolutely certain.
Curtis C. Greco, Founder