Anderson Cooper The Journalist

President Obama has been schmoozing high-profile donors by granting them invitations to the White House, letting them use the bowing alley or watch a movie in the White House theater.  Big deal.  That’s what presidents do.  Bill Clinton did it.  George W. Bush did it.  It’s nothing major.  It’s just politics as usual.  In Barack Obama‘s administration, however, that makes it a problem.

Let’s remove any doubt – before I go any further, I will admit to being a Barack Obama supporter, in the sense that I am a Democrat who supports the major outline of his programs and policies.  Beyond that, however, there seems a bit of a problem with what is happening – still – in Washington general and at the White House more specifically.

Barack Obama ran on a campaign for the White House with the promise of bringing change to the White House and it surrounding Washington culture.  Once there, he has altered the view on many of his pledges to help clean up American politics, offering a number of reasons and excuses trying to justify his back peddling.   Put the excuses and “reasons” aside – they really do not matter.  The fact is that the shifting sand of Barack Obama’s promises and the failure of a Democrat-led Congress to accomplish its primary goals have resulted in the loss of support from independent and older voters – two segments of the electorate that helped to put Obama in the White House.

You can try to justify it in any way you care, but the result is still the loss of support from these portions of the electorate, who simply are not buying what Obama is now seeking to sell them.  They accepted and endorsed his promises once, landing him in the White House so he could carry through.  But he has failed to do so, and that is all that matters.

Paint it in any manner that you wish.  It really does not matter.  What really matters is that Barack Obama is continuing, to some degree, politics as usual after promising that he would change politics as usual.  In so doing, he threatens the overall democrat agenda, and that is what is truly of note here.

The problem could be easily solved:  Obama could make appearances with his supporters at locations outside of government buildings.  Access to the president can still be the attraction, while access to the physical White House and other landmarks would no longer be the issue.

Barack Obama needs to decide if he truly cares about changing Washington or if it was just campaign rhetoric.  His decision rests with his personal ego and where he sees himself fitting into the overall equation. – George Curcio