Obama's B+? Maybe with Grade Inflation

President Obama gave himself a B+ on 60 Minutes this weekend. Frankly, I think he was way overoptimistic. I won't say he has an F, but he's in C or D territory unless something happens between now and Jan. 20, which is really when the year's grade should be bestowed.

Obama promised change, but in domestic terms he's given us lots more of the same ... with nicer language and a more credible persona, of course. Internationally, he's been given a lot of credit -- including an undeserved Peace Prize -- that essentially amounts to an obligation to come through with something.

Don't believe me? Let's go down memory lane ...

• The $787 billion stimulus package is not the failure Republicans say it is, but it was too small (I'm with Christina Romer's wish for $1.2 trillion), too much went into tax cuts and giveaways and too little got in fast-spending people's wallets. These flaws were painfully bipartisan in origin, but Obama signed the legislation when his political capital was at its peak and he should have bonked heads to get a better bill out of Congress.
• The AIG bonus fracas ... ? It was embarrassing to watch .. and it began to make me wonder whose side he's on.
  
• The first Obama budget was basically identical to what Bush's would have been if sane people had been in the White House during the first eight years of this century. The cockamamie stuff was gone, but nothing was fundamentally changed (... because the Obama folks said it was all in the stimulus). Memo to the WH: the stimulus is temporary; we need permanent solutions.
• Speaking of which ... there's the health reform that never happened. Even if Harry "Jellyspine" Reid manages to pull off an alleged health bill, at most Congress will have made minor tweaks to health insurance. Millions of people will continue to die -- yes, to die -- because they don't have enough money to pay for a doctor's or health insurance executive's third home in the Bahamas.
• And while we're on the subject of death, those 30,000 added soldiers in Afghanistan, while we're still not out of Iraq, were a real change from Bush, weren't they?

If Obama had been John McCain, well, sure, this would be a B- or even a B+. After all, McCain never claimed to have the human compassion and verve for change that Obama did.

Frankly, I can't imagine that the end result of McCain's first year would have been that different: we'd still have double-digit unemployment, increasing poverty, health legislation (if any) written by insurance company lobbyists and war without end.

So? What's B+ about that?

It's Time for Me

I've been hearing this phrase with ever greater urgency from fellow Boomers for a decade or so. When Chani, in a recent blogpost, argued that she tore up the memo that "told me I was supposed to have low self-regard and take crap from people," I felt some response larger than a comment was needed.

Chani complained about a woman who was talking endlessly about herself (another creeping Boomer affliction, but also seen at all ages). The woman was admittedly spitting out negativity best left unspoken: TMI. She had also committed the cardinal sin of showing no interest in Chani's life.

Sound familiar? Yes, folks, men and women are the worst people around. No one really cares about you; everyone, including you, is really concerned with self-gratification and survival.

We are all about "me." (Actually, younger people seem to be more about "duty," but that's another post.)

Chani's complaint that she has lived "consumed with the needs and wants of others," which in my experience is not that uncommon a refrain among women, misses the mark. Living for the needs of others is not self-effacing, it is self-aggrandizing and self-affirming.

The put-upon nurturer is in reality saying, "I am the only thing standing between these people and utter chaos." One of the big gains of motherhood and similar traditional roles that I have observed is that women who may have been self-questioning gain enormous confidence as "executives" in the lives of others.

No one does anything except for gain of some kind. The nurturer gets something from nurturing, or else he or she wouldn't do it. Maybe it is approval, a sense of importance, feeling that one is "good."

A change that sounds more appropriate to me than to tear up the memo, is to realize that doing what one is told is no longer appealing. The "oughts" of the past no longer make sense to us; there's nothing in them for us any more.

That's because all our time, from birth to death, has always been really "for me" and "about me." Let's not fool ourselves.

No More Waiting for the Doctor

In the past month I've had about a good half dozen medical appointments and at not one of them -- not one! -- was I ushered in without a wait, even though I was perfectly on time, often early. One time it was more than an hour. This morning I put my foot down.

When the receptionist deigned to appear, ten minutes past my 8:00 am appointment, cheerily asking how everyone was, I said loudly, "You're late."

Silence. Several late-coming jump-the-line patients edged over to her desk, so I called out "You're not going to ignore the clipboard on which everyone signed in order of arrival, are you?"

"Let me boot up the computer," she said.

"If you hadn't arrived late that would be done already," I replied.

What is wrong with these people?

They can't make an appointment even if you're sick for less than three weeks later, but when you arrive you have to wait for their royal highnesses to give you the service you pay for? There's 10 percent unemployment out there and it's catching.

OK, part of it is that it's an HMO, Kaiser Permanente, to be precise. "Better than nothing," as a cab driver told me. Not much.

Kaiser is imperious and quixotic with its rates, but short on service. They remind me of Helen Hunt's famous scene in As Good As It Gets:

CAROL (HH): Fucking HMO bastard pieces of shit... I'm sorry...
DR. BETTES: No. Actually, I think that's their technical name.

Health pseudoreform or not, I refuse to wait any more. If they make an appointment, they keep it.