Something to make known. I am not Republican or Democrat. I am a registered libertarian but I'm not sure they are good enough either. To the point though. President Obama's policies will fail. This bailout will fail. The health care plan will fail. And not because he's too liberal or too much money is being spent. Not because he only wants to tax the super rich. These policies will fail because just like the rich-poor gap, these policies isolate the public from their government. The make it "us" and "them". They have great health care, they don't need to be bailed out. And when I say "they" I will clarify that I mean the senate, supreme court, and executive branch. The house at least still maintains some sort of a connection with its constituents. Back to the policy failure though. For those in the upper middle class (50-120 thousand dollars a year), health care is not a pressing need. For those in that income range that aren't working in Goldman Sachs or AIG, bailouts aren't coming for their companies. So having to sit through a Fox or CNN news briefing every night only to hear that nothing they say will help them out at all, they have no connection with those they are paying taxes to. So while I understand that this is only one sector of the country, it remains a significant portion of the educated voters in this country. When the learned aren't happy, they'll find a better way to use their votes eventually.
To make another important point, I do not believe this is Barack Obama's fault. This country has been moving away from the words of our fore fathers for quite sometime. It was James Madison who wrote in one of the federalist papers about the dangers of factions (or interest groups) and their affect on policy making. Congressmen and women are supposed to be representing the views of their constituents. Interest groups and lobbyist from corporations are not constituents. They do not live in the districts where these House members come from and therefore have no business in law making. But of course later representatives and presidents didn't see this as an issue and now we have Banks and Multi-national Corporations as not only the fuel for our economy, but always the match to burn it down.
The other major mistake made by those in the federal government was not listening to our first commander in chief, George Washington. In his farewell address he said this about foreign politics, "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities" (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp ). The first president saw these problems and now near 250 years later we are feeling the affect of our ignorance to his words. For one second, I would like you the reader to imagine what could be done in this country if the trillions of dollars spent in iraq or in the UN or World Bank and IMF. Remove all those funds and what could be done? Obama could spend all the money he already has and not only would our debt problems be resolved, there would still be enough money to make sure that these policies are sought through to their intended ends.
So think about these things next time you're voting and ask yourself whether anything these politicians say on TV is really going to be able to affect you.