To the editors:

Ms. Kimberly N. Meyer’s op-ed piece (“The Audacity of the Voters,” Jan. 27, 2010) aptly describes the growing sense of disillusionment that many voters feel toward our elected leaders in Washington.

She is wrong, however, to lay the blame for this squarely on the doorstep of President Obama and calling for an end to the Democratic Congressional majority in 2010 and the ouster of the president in 2012. This would be no solution to our country’s problems.

Mr. Obama has been president for little over a year. He inherited from his predecessor an economy deep in recession and two costly and ill-managed wars that have done serious damage to our exploding federal deficit. Few American presidents have entered office under such trying circumstances. This makes Ms. Meyers’s defection all the more distressing, especially given that she is a registered Democrat who “vigorously campaigned” for the president.

Ms. Meyers does bring up valid criticisms of the young administration and its congressional allies: Not nearly enough has been done to address an unforgivably high unemployment rate. Health-care legislation—poorly marketed from the beginning—has stalled, and with the election of Scott Brown to the Senate, might not be revived until the end of the year, if at all. Banks and financial companies that played a major role in our economic meltdown have not been regulated effectively and, in some cases, were even allowed to reward their top employees with large bonuses while surviving off the taxpayers’ money. Lobbyists and corporate cash still control the electoral fates of many officials and the Supreme Court’s ill-advised decision to strike down important campaign-finance laws will only worsen the problem.

Yes, Mr. Obama might have bitten off more than he can safely chew in his first year. He seems to have misjudged the appetite of the nation (or at least the Senate) for the change he promised during his campaign. Independent voters have been running for the hills since health-care reform became his administration’s number-one domestic priority, encouraged by the irresponsible cries of “death panels” from once-respectable public servants like Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and the populist anti-rhetoric of Sarah Palin, which veers daily into demagoguery. The 24-hour misinformation spread by Fox News has also been responsible for stoking Americans’ latent anti-government tendencies.

Ms. Meyer, despite her left-wing credentials, seems to have fallen prey to this nonsensical right-wing hysteria, writing that “[t]here are three branches of government, not one. Presently, the executive branch is being ruled by a demigod who wants control of it all.”

Mr. Obama is not a god, demi or otherwise, but a mere politician and must work within the realm of political reality to achieve his goals. In fact, far from attempting an executive take-over of public policy, Mr. Obama has arguably left far too much of the responsibility for enacting his agenda of change in the hands of Congress, leading to protracted and unproductive negotiations on Capital Hill. While Mr. Obama promised change in Washington, he cannot alter the nature of parliamentary democracy, which relies on such wheeling-and-dealing as the legislative pay-off to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) during the health-care negotiations that Ms. Meyer rightly derides. But surely the complete unwillingness of congressional Republicans to cooperate with Mr. Obama is just as despicable. Given the constant Republican threats of filibuster, an increasingly out-of-reach supermajority of 60 Senate seats is now required to pass any kind of progressive legislation.

The Republicans’ cynical delaying tactics are designed to force the Democrats into entering the mid-term elections of 2010 empty-handed. In doing so, the Republicans are assuring a legislative dead-lock at a time when our country desperately needs new ideas and approaches. It seems that substance-less populism and counter-productive anti-government sentiment are in danger of carrying the day, especially if Democrats like Ms. Meyer are already willing to throw their president to the dogs. Does she really believe that the Palins, Boehners and Cantors of the world will deliver more jobs, better health-care and a speedier withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan than Obama can? Change can only be achieved incrementally, and the president’s fiery and inspiring State of the Union—in which he outlined plans for reining in the deficit, improving the economy, and alleviating the unemployment problem—was a step in the right direction. Let it be one of many.

NICHOLAS NEHAMAS ’11

Cambridge, Mass.

Jan. 27, 2010

Nicholas Nehamas ’11 is a Classics Concentrator living in Mather House. He isn’t ready to give up on Hope, Change or Obama just yet.