by Rich Abete

Dear Mr. President:

With all due respect sir, please wake up! You are one of the most brilliant men that has ever occupied 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (you’d even give Bubba a run for his money!), yet sometimes the most expedient course seems to be just out of your long reach. Why can you not see what is sometimes so apparent? Is it your advisers? If so, they should be hung for treason (….or at least replaced)! I’m not going to dwell on the past, but let me at least give you a couple of examples of this matter to which I refer.

You were elected with the clearest mandate since Reagan’s re-election in 1984. And we controlled both Houses of Congress. The sky was the limit! But you, mistakenly, in my opinion, ceded your power to Nancy Pelosi and Max Baucus (headed up health care reform in the Senate). I know that you saved us from a second Great Depression with the stimulus act, but did you have to let Ms. Pelosi and the House Democratic Caucus make such a mess of it? It’s easy to see 20/20 in retrospect, but I felt the same way when it was happening in real time. And didn’t you realize that the Right was going to skewer you as a Socialist regardless of the truth of the Affordable Care Act, whether or not it included a public option? At the time, even I could see that coming a mile down the road. What I said you should have done then was Medicare for All, and I believe it now. You would have taken the same heat, it wouldn’t have taken two years to write and more than four years to implement, and you may have emerged with some of that once abundant political capital in tact. One more thing sir, and again, I am just trying to help. How is it that Republicans were able to lead you right into a debate about austerity in the middle of a recession?? As a good Keynesian sir, I know you know better! Well, no use in dwelling on what could have been. But it’s not too late for you (and us!) if you could just listen up.

As you know sir, this election is going to be a squeaker. How this is so is mind-boggling to say the very least. I mean, honestly, Mitt Romney isn’t fit to carry your water in my opinion, never mind lead the country with all of its existing and imminent challenges. But the truth remains that we are a divided nation and that a full half of the electorate wouldn’t recognize an analytical thought if it was on Fox News. And it’s clear: the only job the Congress will willingly allow you to create is a job for Mittens. But there is a way to show the people that the GOP has allowed this economy to tank just for that purpose: Go big!

Give up on your paltry $140 billion American Jobs Bill and propose a sweeping infrastructure restoration bill…you know, a Rooseveltian WPA type program…that would put tens of millions of folks back to work. Barnstorm the country to promote it. It would be a sure winner if framed properly and included in your soaring, kick-ass stump speech. And then, sit back and watch Boehner and Mc Connell commit electoral suicide by shutting it down. The down side is you will be painted a tax and spend liberal, but they already laughingly call you that and worse anyway. A little bit of constructive populism might just go a long way.

Mr. President, so you know, many of us know all the wonderful things you’ve done in your first term despite what these yo-yo’s are saying about you. On behalf of all the thinking people out there, I would like to thank you. But you have just gotten warmed up.  Don’t blow it now and go big!

Respectfully,

A Concerned Constituent and Supporter