Don’t Cry for Me, Richie Daley

“Blessed are the peacemakers…”  -  Matthew 5:9

“I take my Presidents as I take my coffee…strong, smooth, and black.” - Bismarck bumper sticker

The Bismarck Tribune is having a devil of time keeping up with President Barack Obama these days.  Their headline October 9, 2009 was “Source: Obama focusing on al-Quaida, not Taliban.”

Good stuff, if you are a fan of waging war like the Romans: “divide and conquer.”

The very next day the Tribune was obliged to report on Obama, the peacemaker: “Nobel Shocker:  Obama awarded Peace Prize.”

I wasn’t shocked, just pleasantly surprised.  And I felt that the Nobel Committee’s “Audacity of Hope,”  was as much an award to myself, and all other Americans who voted for Barack Obama and his “Audacity of Hope” last November.

Too soon?  Not really, when you consider eight bellicose years under Dubya that preceded him, and organized hostility stirred up professional hate mongers, that may deprive the Nobel Committee of another chance to honor President Obama, since it is not awarded posthumously. It is never too early to encourage such a performance.
Obama’s speech in Cairo removed millions of Muslims from the “we hate America” list by its candor and humility.  Removal of needlessly provocative missiles in Eastern Europe produced a “friendly” Russia, both a thrust toward a strategy of isolating Iran, and a peaceful one of recommitted détente with our most powerful nuclear rival.  Not bad for a few months, and a direct repudiation of the jingoistic Bush years.

With passage of a Health Care Bill through the Finance Committee, our Constitutional Law Professor-in-Chief has also scored a major diplomatic victory against forces of ignorance, arrogance and overweening greed in his own country by respecting Congress.  In exercising as much diplomatic restraint and tenacity with Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats as in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Korea, Barack Obama is gently, but inexorably, empowering meaningful help for Americans with medical woes.

In refusing to be intimidated by a right wing press that gets more rabid as it realizes it no longer has the power to frighten the White House, he shows members of his own Party how to grow and maintain a backbone.  Olympia Snowe already had one.

The Nobel Committee said:  “Awarding Obama the peace prize could be seen as an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration.” Indeed, and very bad news for Republicans and right wingers who so roundly cheered Obama’s alleged failure to deliver the Olympics of 2016 to Chicago.

I called my friend Tony in Chicago to congratulate him on the “loss.”  He, like most sensible Chicagoans, knows the Olympics would have had the usual physical and psychic benefits for athletes, sports fans, and nations world wide, but that the rest would be about money—the rich TV networks, fat cat contractors, and “Suits” running the International Olympic Committee] getting richer, and local taxpayers getting poorer.

Jobs, other than those for Richie’s construction buddies? Please.  The Olympics are in town for a few weeks.  The White Sox, Bears, Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs, CSO, Lyric Opera, Goodman Theater, Millenium Park, T-Rex, and Grant Park food fests and rock concerts are there all year long, every year,  and they already have the building sites they need. I can just hear ward-heeling Blagojevich types grousing about Obama’s failure to bring back Olympic “pork” to Chicago…. “Jeez, we send ‘im over ta Europe ta get da Olympics and all he comes back with is some lousy peace prize.”

Not so Richie Daley, however.  Barack Obama made good on a political debt, despite how it might have hurt him in national or international politics.  Daley also knows that Obama doesn’t “owe” him anymore.  Loyalty is important in politics, but it has its limits, and professionals like Richie Daley, Foreign Diplomats, and the Nobel Prize Committee, understand.  The major media missed the obvious once again.  The man who kept his word to a Chicago “machine” that he never really was a part of, can also be trusted to keep his word to the American people, and a world which watches his performance with gathering approval. 

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