Let's stop undermining Obama now

I’m not surprised.

News outlets have been calling it for weeks. President Barack Obama had a 3 percent general lead, and 55 percent of voters predicted a victory for him as opposed to 35 percent predicting a victory for Romney.

Now he’s set to be in office again, I won’t gloat.

The race this year was a bitter, petty one, and, though I’m liberal, I’m not proud of how the major parties handled themselves.

But I believe the best man won.

Barack is back, and everyone has to deal with it.

We’re not in some happy ideological dreamland like we were four years ago. At this point, we’ve seen what Obama can do, and to some of us, it’s been pretty disappointing.

I appreciate the myriad of concrete things, like reforming health care and killing Osama bin Laden. The problem is, while we want our president to do these sorts of notable things, we elected Obama in 2008 based on something bigger than that. We voted for both the man and the idea he represented.

This term, voters need to remember Obama’s no more of a messiah or miracle worker than any other president before him. If we want to change America into a place that’s less greedy, more giving and more forgiving, a place that resembles that idea we once wanted, we have to help the president we elected.

Though shifts in law come through government process, an ideological shift can come only through the people, what they support and how they live their lives. Think about that while voting in the next round of local elections, in where and what you’re buying and even in how you interact with people who think differently than you.

We’re a country at war with ourselves, and if we want to move forward toward the change Obama once promised was possible, we’ve got to stop holding ourselves back.

This could be the rallying cry of a new voting generation.

Obama won again, and if you truly believe he’s the candidate of American young people, that means we’re finally taking our life by the horns. As much as we’re accused of apathy, we managed to get our guy back in the White House, and that’s a pretty big accomplishment.

We’re no longer just letting our parents’ and grandparents’ votes decide our future. We’re the ones inheriting this country and all of the problems it comes with, so it’s about time we started making our own decisions.

Obama’s second term won’t just be a good thing for the people of our country, though. It could be a good thing for the rest of the world. Eighty-one percent of people in 36 countries preferred a second term by Obama. If he tones down the blindly nationalistic rhetoric we saw in the presidential debates, we might even have the chance to start repairing our international reputation.

Whether you voted him in or not, let’s agree to move forward. Obama has the capacity to do great things, but only without us constantly undermining him.

He’s already had four years of it, and he’s still here. We need to stop fighting with one another and instead fight for governmental change to help alleviate some of the partisan roadblocks that got us here in the first place.
 
This time, let’s focus on the ideological and the concrete. Both can be accomplished, but only if the citizens, government and president work together.

Otherwise, all we have is four more years of frustration.

­— kelfritz@indiana.edu