Indeed and in ALL sincerity, Obama SHOULD be listening to what we have to say.. [View All]

[ddeclue]

To those who would mock me for demanding such a simple act of accountability from my government I say:

What you would say in bitter sarcasm I believe with utter conviction:

Obama (and ALL of our elected leaders for that matter) SHOULD be listening to what I have to say.

I have spent the last five years getting Democrats elected on the theory that FINALLY I'll have someone in government who will actually listen to ME, not the fat cat lobbyists and the rich and powerful with millions of dollars to buy votes.

It is this very notion of accountability to "We the People" that is at the core of our American way of life. The Founders threw off their yoke of English colonialism and non-representative monarchical government for the express purpose of holding their leaders accountable and having a government that was representative and which listened to the will of the people.

The ONLY way we get our government BACK, the only way we get our American dream back is to elect politicians that will actually listen to us and not to knuckle under when they don't listen but rather to find someone to replace them. If they don't fear being held accountable by the voters on election day then there will be no democracy.

It has meant thousands of hours of my free time in the last five years and thousands of dollars too but I finally have at least a few Democratic GRASSROOTS state reps that will listen to me, a few county and city commissioners too and NOW a couple of U.S. Representatives and I hope that I have a President in President-Elect Obama who will listen also.

I certainly don't expect my elected officials to always agree with me but I do expect them to listen to what I have to say and to not merely send me some condescending form letter with "I'm to busy and too important to care what you have to say" formulaic answers when I choose to question authority.

To the politicians who might be reading this post I say: These form letter staff-it-out answers that ignore what I have to say do more to motivate me to un-elect you in your next election that you can possibly imagine and the best thing that you can do to insure your RE-election is to make me happy by taking me seriously and to truly LISTEN to my point of view and if you disagree with it do so honestly and sincerely work to convince me that my facts or logic or both are somehow flawed and that yours are the better ones.

Now clearly I don't expect President-Elect Obama to personally be taking my calls or replying to my letters. I do however expect President-Elect Obama to be true to his word and work for real change rather than compromise with the "experience" that got us into the mess we are in now. It is for THIS that I voted.

If Obama chooses to go back on this I will find other Democratic candidates to invest my time and money in when 2012 rolls around. If Obama sticks to his campaign promise for real change we can believe in or at least makes a sincere effort to do so, then it will go a long way to keeping my own faith in him and motivating me to work hard for his re-election.

The notion that we somehow "need" experience in government is something of a myth. Nixon, George H.W. Bush, Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are or were all men "of great experience". Experience is just as likely to breed hubris and failure as it is success.

Experience is in my humble opinion over-rated. It is the mistaken notion that somehow personally or professionally surviving a serious mistake somehow makes you smarter, wiser, or a better person.

I'm looking for people who learn objectively from history not merely from their subjective personal experiences which tend to be skewed to reinforce one's world-view. I'm looking for people who are actually smart enough and wise enough not to make the mistake in the first place instead of "learning" from it at my expense. I don't want a President who learns how to handle hurricanes by bungling a Hurricane Katrina - I want one who already KNOWS how to react quickly and effectively and competently without having to learn that mistake at the expense of 1800 dead Americans and several hundred billion dollars of lost infrastructure.

What we need in government are SMART people, conscientious people, people who want to work for the greater good, people who will put themselves last and their country first, people who believe that the government can be the answer not the problem - in short we need people who understood what the Founders meant when they pledged "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors" to the cause of Independence in the Declaration.

Those who understand this pledge and who are willing to make that personal sacrifice and do the right thing instead of the thing that promotes their career are the true patriots and THOSE are the people that President Elect Obama ought to be seeking to populate his administration.

Those here who keep calling for Democratic "unity" are in effect asking us to give Obama a pass on this accountability - the very SAME accountability that we've been demanding of George W. Bush these last eight years. The reality is that they who call for blind Democratic unity do Barack Obama a disservice by denying him the feedback he will need to assure that he is truly acting as "the people's wise and faithful servant".

The reality is that the best thing we can do for Obama is to hold him accountable to our wishes, to keep him listening to the people and to keep him doing the right thing. I trust and admire Barack Obama but I blindly trust no one especially in political office.

The most important reason that George W. Bush failed was that he failed to listen to the voice of We the People - he failed to be held accountable by the media, the Congress, the Courts, by his own political party and most importantly by the public at large. President Bush felt he had unlimited power and felt he was invincible and infallible because nobody ever held him truly accountable.

So, yes, we must ALWAYS question our leaders - in fact when they are OUR guy, the one WE helped elect then we have a DUTY to hold them accountable even more.


Democratically Yours,

Doug De Clue
Orlando, FL

"So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?" - I Kings 3 Verse 9

Prayer of Harry S. Truman, April 12, 1945 upon inauguration to the Presidency