I can intellectually understand that the Presidency of the United States is not the most impactful seat of power. It cannot unilaterally patch the holes in our social safety net, it cannot singlehandedly curb carbon emissions and will never be able to abstain from exporting violence overseas. Yet, it holds tremendous psychological power — there is no single political office that tints the way I see the future more than the Presidency.
The Clinton years of my youth were mostly optimistic, mainly because I was a child and all the violence and scandal were immaterial to me. But it was also pre-global warming, pre-9/11, pre-inexorable march to the grave. We thought of environmentalism as the hole in the ozone layer and protecting pandas.
The Bush years were my first encounter with the feeling of nationwide pessimism and darkness. It was leadership that relied on double speak, on denying the reality you saw with your eyes, and finding wedge issues to inject steroids into the polarization of politics. With potentially half a million dead civilians in Iraq, this administration should never be rehabilitated and never be forgotten as the start of the end of things.
The Obama years were an exercise in willful ignorance and optimism. I ate up the lines of revolution in politics and to some extent it was rewarded; but we all did our best to swallow things we wouldn’t put up with in other presidencies, like targeted death from the sky and accelerated deportation. We tell ourselves that this is as good as it gets when it comes to politicians; no President can usher in complete liberal ideals, so if we could get this death machine running with 20% more kindness and some coral reefs preserved that might be the best we can do. Maybe that way of thinking is correct. But it’s still true that there was a sense of optimism and idealism in the 2008 campaign that was watered down by 2012 into pragmatism and concessions. Still, it mattered psychologically. It was like an overcast day finally parted over the country and we had a President that at least saw reality in the same terms.
These past 4 years have been a plague. While it may not ultimately rise to the level of malicious mass death that Bush & Cheney wrought, it is by far the most toxic Presidency of the modern era. One that made entire states and peoples his enemy; that bullied, coerced and lied with glee. A festering boil rising from the sickened carcass of this country, it is the natural outcome of the stagnation and misery that is the core of American politics.
There is a prevailing sense that things never get significantly better, then the people that want to make things worse tell us they should be in charge because of it, then things get worse, then people that want to make things better tell us they should be in charge because of it, then they only make vague and complicated changes over years in power, so that things never get significantly better.
With the Joe Biden Presidency, I don’t know what to hope for; the ceiling of this administration seems to be the floor of the Obama Presidency. But even if it were on par, I’m at a point of experience in this country that I no longer feel the optimism of just any Democrat in office. My willingness to wax rhapsodic about the Obama administration is fully tapped out. Without real leftist credentials and a desire to trash the filibuster to finally make a difference, a traditional Democrat just means a brief reprieve from psychological stress and nothing more.
So, no, the birds are not falling out of the sky. But I lack the catharsis of healing of 2008. I know too much now, that there is no antidote to the way we are. I’d rather we slow down the trip down the spiral, but the Democratic establishment has yet to provide real hope that we can upend this whole shape.