The Time Has Come And It's Going Nowhere

Bill Maher is never one to keep his mouth shut, on any topic. However, in recent years, I have come to find that on Friday nights, when I sit down to watch HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher, I hear my thoughts from the entire week being conveyed much more eloquently by a comdedian than I could ever manage. In his blog this week, Maher tackled his feelings on the Obama administration so far.

"It's still to early to lose hope in a guy as smart and talented as Barack Obama. But I would counsel him to remember: If you're going undercover to infiltrate how Washington works, so you become one of them for a while, to gain their confidence, well, it can be just like all those movies where a cop goes deep, deep, DEEP undercover with drug people and -- he's a drug addict, too!

Logic tells me that really smart guys like Obama and Rahm Emanuel know better what they're doing than I do. They certainly know things I don't know. I think we have the same general goals and beliefs. And this is what they do for a living -- I wouldn't even try it. But I will never stop having this doubt: that maybe if they had really charged in there riding the forceful energy of the historic election, and acted like it was an emergency moment -- which it was -- they could have gotten some big victories right up front, and there really could have been an historic "first hundred days" for this administration and the country. Instead of what happened, which is the Obamas got a dog. It could have worked -- the country had given its endorsement to '...and now for something completely different.' There might have been a way to knock the Republicans back on their heels right away, with the argument that 'The American people demanded we make these changes, and you are unpatriotic to stand in their way.'"
[Read the full entry here]

As usual, I'm inclined to agree with Maher. I was (and still am) a supporter of Obama, but sometimes I can't help but feel like all the things I was promised were just talk. It would not, undoubtedly, be the first time a politician had lied to get elected, but for some reason I still believe in Obama. I believe he meant all of those promises and still wants them. What makes me nervous is that he seems to be allowing his desire for bipartisanship win over his desire to get things done. At this point, Republicans have made it clear that they are not interested in helping pass any legislation that Obama wants, so its time for him to give up his dream of political harmony and get down to business.

It still has been less than a year, and it is possible that, in the true American nature, we want it all as fast as we can get it and we're getting ahead of ourselves. Perhaps Obama just needs a little more time. However, I don't think that its too much to ask that in this amount of time we could have seen him come forward and say that despite the opposition, he is president and he is going to get the things done that he promised to the people who elected him. As Maher suggests in the video below, I would love to see him stand up, as George Bush did, and basically say forget the rest of you, I'm in charge and this is what we're doing. In the words of Bill Maher, "The Audacity of Hope part is over. Right now, I'm hoping for a little more audacity."

Below is a clip of Bill Maher on his show Real Time doing his segment, "New Rules." (Warning: The video below contains profanity)