What is wrong (or missing) with Obama; Why Hillary seems like more of the same

Consider this: “the Obama administration’s approach to governance: politically rational incrementalism that reinforces the existing power structures and is grossly insufficient given the scope of the problem.”

With that quote, the left-leaning magazine Jacobin has finally distilled for me, in an article about energy policy (which I do not normally follow much) the essence of the practices of the Obama presidency and its problems.

It fits. This is what is wrong with everything Obama has done: the audacity of audacity. Obama is basically The Man’s man.

Apply it to health policy. Remember “health care reform”? The hope in electing Obama was to change the economics of health care so that it was a universal, rationally purchased set of goods and services—“single payer” or what the British and I prefer to call it, socialized medicine.

I’ve used the United Kingdom’s National Health and it was wonderful before Thatcher. I can say the same for the Canadian system of a similar era.

The thing is there is nothing boring, cabbage-like or—horrors!—Soviet about nationalizing and making medicine available to all as a human right. Our closest neighbors and cultural kin have done it without waving red flags.

Instead, we got a worthy, viable, somewhat fairer—but to those already insured—not inexpensive form of health insurance reform. Medicine is still nowhere near universal and the costs of the system run by the mafia known as the American Medical Association (when you find a middle-income doctor, let me know) are skyrocketing still.

Sure, Obama was an eminently better choice than McCain or Romney. I voted for him twice for obvious reasons. He’s smarter, wiser, more adroit. He has never had decent congressional relations people—I can’t fathom why—but he has been a pretty decent president

However, to those of us expecting what he promised—remember what one idiot called the “hopey-changey thing”?—Obama let us down.

This is what makes me leery of Hillary. Sure, she will be better than Trump or Jeb if it comes to that. But might not Bernie Sanders be better and a real change? I am beginning to come to that line of thinking.

Journalism is dead, long live journalism!

Nothing speaks more eloquently about the death of journalism in the Internet age as the front pages of today's New York Times and Washington Post, both covering the Greek crisis (and the gumption of the Greeks, which I salute) with the exact same Reuters photo.

Afluenza, anyone? A pool on the 17th floor for a few million

Dad in pool, boy bomb-diving, girl dipping toes in the water, older boy approaching and mom in a radiant yellow summer dress and straw hat, a scene that could be anywhere except for the skyline of Manhattan reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows at the pool's side.

Then you realize you are looking at "Residence 17E" of a luxury apartment skyscraper that is being advertised in the inside cover of this morning's New York Times Magazine—which, of course, you still get delivered in print to your door.

Let's move there, you say. After all, the apartments go for a mere "$3.5M up to $25M." The M does not stand for the Spanish imperial coin maravedí, but for a million good old, greenbacks from Uncle Sam.

But then you realize: it's on the West Side of Manhattan. Their view is of New Jersey. Oh, please!

My Future

Today is my 63rd birthday and in The New York Times there are three obituaries that remind me how short my days are now. 

One has the death of Hermann Zapf, designer of 200 typefaces, including ZapfDingbats (see below), which I use in my work (sparingly). He died at the remarkable age of 96.

Zapf's dingbats

A second obit announces the death of the man who prosecuted cult-leader and assassin Charles Manson, and later became a crime writer, Vincent Bugliosi. He was 80.

A third is the less-well-known Vincent Musetto, a retired New York Post headline writer, one who was best remembered for HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. The story was of a grisly crime on April 13, 1983, involving decapitation. Musetto died at 74.

If I follow far less famously in their footsteps, I can expect to live 11, 17 or, less likely, 33 more years.

All of which brings me to a gospel passage pointed out to me recently. It contains what in earlier stages of life I might not have considered a remarkable pearl of wisdom, but today, thinking of life and death as proximate things, it does.

The evangelist John puts in the risen Jesus' mouth the following words, addressed to the apostle Peter:

Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go. (John 21:18)

I already experience hearing loss and my eyes require more help from my glasses than they used to in the past. Someone this weekend reminded me that in retirement I may be less mobile than I am now. Then, toward the end, a hand will take me further where I have no desire to go, because I can't imagine it. Living is all I know.

I am comforted, I don't quite know why, just knowing that this is all in the natural order of things. It need not involve decapitation, nor adversary action in the legal system nor require of me a lasting burst of graphic creativity. I will just be carried there.