Change We Can Believe In? by Brent Smith
Comments (0) I was greatly disappointed by the results of the November presidential election, but there seemed to be a couple of silver linings. Obama’s lack of experience and Washington outsider status was supposed to result in open-minded picks for his cabinet. This sort of outside of the box appealed to me even across party lines. If even a small part of changing the way business is done in Washington was realized, I believe that it wold be a change for a better. For a while, the president-elect appeared to be drifting to the center, which would be a much better place than the fringe of the left where he could be found in the US senate.
Illinois politics has been at the center of a firestorm lately with their governor, even though it has been traditionally more corrupt than most states. What strikes me is the cabinet selections; instead of a team of rivals, we are getting just a bunch of people from Illinois. First, the beady-eyed, shifty Rahm Emmanuel was appointed chief of staff. Then Barack appointed as secretary of education another guy from Chicago. And while it sounds from initial reports that he has done some good things, the media outlet I was listening to (NPR) kept talking about how he plays pick up basketball with the president elect. I don’t like it when any media outlet goes in the tank for one party: I refuse to listen to Hannity and hardly ever listen to Limbaugh for this very reason. The more I watch cabinet appointments, the more I see that “change you can believe in” is empty rhetoric that slightly misled me and completely duped many starry-eyed idealists. But what bothers me is that Obama’s background was not thoroughly examined by major media outlets, even though he came from the most corrupt political arena in the country, but they went sprinting to Alaska to check out what had been happening in Wasilla, Alaska with the dangerous Sarah Palin. What the American public needs is transparency, but as long a couple well-constructed, well-delivered sentences sweep people off their feet, our nation will not be stronger.
