An Open Memorandum

TO: U. S. President Barack Obama
FROM: The Old Man (in Canada)

As I write just a year has passed since your election victory in 2008. Now as I watch the news coverage of your Asian trip you seem changed from the ebullient personality of your campaign. You appear gray, stressed out, irritable, and I am sorry to say, somewhat unsure of yourself.

I take it as a given that the presidency of the United States is an impossible job. Yet you and so many others seek the power and prestige of that office. What promises must be made to reach there? The public promises are known, of course, for they are delivered ad infinitum, until enough people believe “yes we can” accomplish whatever you promised that each person believes in his interest, and vote you into office. Most, however, forget the “we” part. Once they voted, it did not matter that you reminded them repeatedly during the campaign that it would not be easy and would require their participation and continued support. You would also need the recalcitrant support of a majority of Representatives and Senators. Yet all supporters expected you to do it alone.

Those are the public promises. They raised expectations you could not fulfill. But how many private promises must be made to the power brokers, the big money raisers, the office seekers, the political establishment figures? From President Washington’s time I believe every president has had to deal with them and with so many conflicting opinions from those picked to advise the chosen one, the momentum is soon lost. When that original momentum is gone, real change rarely happens. Even FDR lost his momentum in the first year.

I get the impression that all Presidents have similar experiences. Once in the White House you are virtual prisoners of your own Secret Service staff, and given the obvious anger and the stupid accusations expressed by so many violent sounding people now, I suspect you are even more closely guarded by that staff than were previous incumbents.

No doubt you have an over-abundance of “information” and “expert advice” from generals, diplomats and spies in dealing with foreign affairs as well as from economists and other domestic careerists to pursue your intended program at home. They are at your beck and call but each, I believe, has a vested interest and pressure from others to seek decisions in their favour.

Such conflicting positions cannot always be reconciled by compromise. What would happen I wonder if you listened to “just the facts” and the various suggestions as to how and why and when without too much repetition from each conflicting opinion, then analyzed whatever the situation and decided on something you simply thought was right even if that was considered revolutionary by all your conflicting advisers?

Put the case of your public promise as candidate to close Guantanamo Bay. Certainly it was never just a matter of making a decision to close the prison, which John McCain also said he would do, then signing an executive order and delegating the job to an official. What was really needed was to change the rather nebulous status assigned to the people held as prisoners. Surely they must be released, dealt with under international law as alleged terrorists or prisoners of war, or tried as criminals by their own countries, or as alleged criminals under American law. George Bush would no doubt have closed the base had anyone really known how to deal with them. I doubt if even proposed military tribunal members had any notion about the intended end result. Surely no further useful information could be obtained from any of them after so many years. In the end no matter what is decided will result in angry criticism from all sides as does your Attorney General’s decision to have some trials in New York.

Currently you are still looking at the proposed troop increase in Afghanistan. In the long run it will be impossible to keep that region in the American sphere of influence. Alexander the Great may have conquered the region but even his influence did not last and independent tribalism has prevailed ever since. I doubt if fifty years of occupation by American troops and the influence of American consumerism will forever change that fundamental.

Furthermore, as a Canadian I have a great deal of trouble finding justification for the presence of armed United States military forces in some 175 countries around the world. That was the number announced during the baseball World Series to which the games were broadcast for the benefit of the troops.

As to your Health Plan schlimazel, it seems to me it has been so messed up by members of Congress, that the thousand plus pages of proposed statute will never be enacted. The Canada Health Act contains some 23 sections of appropriate length. Our plan is, of course, operated by provincial governments under their respective Medical Services statutes and both federal and provincial statutes are supplemented by regulations, agreements and so on. Even our single-payer plan is complex, but surely the long initiating statute will do nothing but result in never-ending litigation and expense. What everyone will have to face, of course, is that privately or publicly insured health care will not cover everything. Inevitably some procedures and drugs will be rationed and either free marketers or government will do so arbitrarily.

Mr. President, your window of opportunity is nearly gone. Some of your most ardent former supporters, foreign and domestic, including The Economist magazine, have turned to severe criticism as your good intentions and public promises are month by month overwhelmed and pre-empted by the immediate demands of each day and the still worsening economy you inherited. Let me be just another minor voice to urge you to base decisions on what you deem right and just and “damn the torpedoes”, to discount the voice of the lobbyists, to announce your decisions to Americans and to persuade them to force the legislators to enact suitable statutes.

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