The Great Black Hope
Lots of decent Americans are feeling put upon by their government; left out in the cold by a system which has lost its artificial lustre. They feel abandoned by a government that has catered to the rich, while ignoring the poor and the middle class.
The Canadian Conservative government of Stephen Harper has been following rather closely in those Yankee footsteps, wringing its hands, dithering and fiddling while the economy burns.
The middle class across the continent are experiencing a fear of the future and there seems to be no one who can bring a sense of calm to the troubled times.
President-Elect, Barrack Obama campaigned with slogans aimed at inspiring people. He preached the mantras of "change" and "hope". He galvanized a generation out of their apathy and promised them "a new day".
But so far at least, Obama has fallen short of the standards that the "thinking middle class" and the younger generation of his followers have set for him.
One of the few political writers we can count on these days to tell it straight, is Frank Rich of The New York Times. He cuts through the political crap with apparent ease. His style is fluid, his work always well-documented and his observations sharp and to the point.
Here then is a a brief quotation from Mr. Rich's Sunday column:
"Our next president, like his predecessor, is promising “a new era of responsibility and accountability.” We must hope he means it. Meanwhile, we have the governor he leaves behind in Illinois to serve as our national whipping boy, the one betrayer of the public trust who could actually end up paying for his behavior. The surveillance tapes of Blagojevich are so fabulous it seems a tragedy we don’t have similar audio records of the bigger fish who have wrecked the country. But in these hard times we’ll take what we can get.
And this is where you can read more by my favorite political analyst.
