A Glass Half Full Is As Good As It Gets; So Let's Get A Bigger Glass

Like many progressives, I've looked at the Obama administration for the last four years and seen a glass half empty. Two recent Obama events have made me reconsider my disappointment.  I was naive.  The glass has been half full -- and always will be.  That's as good as it gets.

Obama's interview with Mark Maron on WTF was the first "event."  One smart-ass commentator criticized Maron for not pushing the President and forcing sound-bite gaffs -- the gotcha school of journalism we've too damn much of.  The WTF encounter is  a model interview: thoughtful, disarming conversation drawing out inner thoughts and reflections.  Listen to the whole -- and not just for the use of "nigger", which was purposeful and pointed and appropriate -- and see if you don't begin to ask, as have I, what is a reasonable expectation of a POTUS?  Progress in faltering steps.  Glasses half full: the typical condition of our democratic republic.  (Click here.)

A President's task, then, is to manage the size of the glass.  A conservative might set out to downsize it; a progressive, to enlarge it.

Obama's eulogy for Rev. Pinckney is the second "event" that leads me to reassess and dial down my impatience.  His words and earnest delivery were as eloquent a call to action and attitude adjustment as any I have heard.  Worth listening to again: click here.

American ninnies will continue to disparage, decry, deny what is being done by this pragmatic progressive.  And every reasonable person will find something not to their liking; mine is his willingness to re-enter Iraq.  But, overall, Obama is proving right for these times of ambiguity and complexity.  Nothing is simple; there are no good choices.  The glass will remain half full, and that's perhaps as it should be; the glass just needs to get bigger.