President Obama - One Year Later: Austin Lee

Change. What a wonderful word to campaign on. It is a word that sounds very definite. To change something means to cause it to be different than it was before. It is also a word that is just as ambiguous. Without providing a context change can be pretty much anything. So, this is the word that Barack Obama used to win the election. The funny thing is that Barack Obama has been described as being just as two-sided as the word change. A New York Times reporter described Obama as, "...sometimes giving warring classmates [during his Harvard years] the impression that he agreed with all of them at once."

That is not the kind of change the country voted for in the 2008 election. The change was supposed to be getting out of the wars in the Middle East, a television showing of the health care debates, and a shut-out of the lobbyists. The change we got was an increase in the number of troops in Afghanistan, health care meetings behind closed doors in the face of EXTREME disapproval by the American people, and lobbyists with unfettered access to the White House.

So, what has changed for me? I am now more fearful than ever that the America of my childhood will be forever lost. I am now more wary of the way that politics are done in Washington that I was under Bush. I am now more convinced that politicians are more interested in power and control than in listening to their electorate. And I am more convinced than I was in 2008 that Barack Obama is a horrible leader. Somehow I don't think this was the change that everyone was hoping for.

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