The Hardest Job in Washington
There are many pastimes in Washington DC - playing politics, complaining about traffic, guessing what Marion Barry will get arrested for next. And for the past four years, we've also been able to watch the Nationals play barely passable Major League baseball. There have been ups and downs, pride and embarrassment (mostly embarrassment), joys and disappointments. And through it all, we've been told there is "The Plan".
The Plan is the strategy that the Nationals' management has claimed since they bought the team in 2006. It involves taking a franchise with poor major league talent and no minor league talent and slowly building it into respectability. It involves investing in the future at the expense of the present. The Plan has been the reason given for the Nationals not signing big-name free agents, not paying top dollar to sign draft picks, and trading for no-name mediocre major leaguers and a never-ending stream of "prospects" who won't be major-league ready for years (if ever). We've been asked to be patient during this difficult process and assured it will bring us a bright new future. In the meantime we get to watch the ugly results of the process and console ourselves with the promise that on some distant day, in some unknowable future season, the Nationals will be a winning team. But the people are growing restless.
A little ways up the road, a similar dynamic is being played out along sixteen blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. New management is in charge and has been for a little while. They came in promising change - a focus on making hard choices that had been put off too long. They warned of sacrifices today to make tomorrow better. They even made a few promises that even they probably knew they couldn't keep. But the people believed, and they signed up to giving Barack Obama four years to see what he could do.
The results have been mixed. We now have our first black president, but we still have tensions between black men and white police officers making front-page news. Torture has been officially banned, but Guantanamo is still open, with no clear disposition for those still held there. There's a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, but Afghanistan is getting worse. Healthcare reform is closer to reality than it ever was in 1993, but there's no guarantee it will insure everyone or make costs go down. A massive stimulus has been passed, but only about a third of the money has been distributed so far. The US auto industry has been saved from catastrophic collapse, but thousands of jobs have still been (and still will be) lost, GM is now majority-owned by the US government, and Chrysler is now owned by the Italians. And most importantly, the economy has still not recovered despite all of these bold, unpalatable-but-necessary interventions. The people are growing restless.
Because this is Washington, there is no shortage of naysayers and nattering nabobs of negativism who see in Obama's struggles the failure of his politics of unity and hope. There are those on the right declaring Obama's presidency a failure barely an eighth of the way into it. There are those in the center starting to wonder whether supporting the president was a good idea. And there are those on the left who feel as though the glacial pace of change represents a betrayal of their faith in their chosen one.
But then there are those, like myself, who recognize the enormity of the tasks that President Obama has taken on, who know the bureaucracy of government, and can acknowledge how remarkable his accomplishments have been despite the disappointments. I still believe that he is the best person to be running the country at this time, and I think he's doing a tremendous job of it under the circumstances. Is he perfect? No. Do I wish he had done some things differently? Yes. Am I still glad I voted for him? You'd better believe it. So I do my best to tune out the gloom-and-doomers and keep faith in the idea that, in the long run, when we've lived through more 24-hour news cycles than we care to remember, the country will be back on the right track and once again an example for the world.
And I divert myself from all of this by going down South Capitol Street to watch the Nationals. It sometimes feels like diverting myself from a train wreck by watching demolition derby. The very same hope that keeps me believing in the president is what keeps me believing in The Plan. So while people all around me are talking about how the Nationals have no leadership, how their bullpen and defense show no signs of improving, and how the latest trade for yet another prospect leaves us worse off than before, I just nod. Yes, things are bad. And there's no telling when they're going to get better. But just like the president, I keep believing. In both cases only time will tell whether my faith has been misplaced. But I will continue to maintian that faith, in both my president and my team, even though it may be the hardest job in Washington.
The Plan is the strategy that the Nationals' management has claimed since they bought the team in 2006. It involves taking a franchise with poor major league talent and no minor league talent and slowly building it into respectability. It involves investing in the future at the expense of the present. The Plan has been the reason given for the Nationals not signing big-name free agents, not paying top dollar to sign draft picks, and trading for no-name mediocre major leaguers and a never-ending stream of "prospects" who won't be major-league ready for years (if ever). We've been asked to be patient during this difficult process and assured it will bring us a bright new future. In the meantime we get to watch the ugly results of the process and console ourselves with the promise that on some distant day, in some unknowable future season, the Nationals will be a winning team. But the people are growing restless.
A little ways up the road, a similar dynamic is being played out along sixteen blocks of Pennsylvania Avenue. New management is in charge and has been for a little while. They came in promising change - a focus on making hard choices that had been put off too long. They warned of sacrifices today to make tomorrow better. They even made a few promises that even they probably knew they couldn't keep. But the people believed, and they signed up to giving Barack Obama four years to see what he could do.
The results have been mixed. We now have our first black president, but we still have tensions between black men and white police officers making front-page news. Torture has been officially banned, but Guantanamo is still open, with no clear disposition for those still held there. There's a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq, but Afghanistan is getting worse. Healthcare reform is closer to reality than it ever was in 1993, but there's no guarantee it will insure everyone or make costs go down. A massive stimulus has been passed, but only about a third of the money has been distributed so far. The US auto industry has been saved from catastrophic collapse, but thousands of jobs have still been (and still will be) lost, GM is now majority-owned by the US government, and Chrysler is now owned by the Italians. And most importantly, the economy has still not recovered despite all of these bold, unpalatable-but-necessary interventions. The people are growing restless.
Because this is Washington, there is no shortage of naysayers and nattering nabobs of negativism who see in Obama's struggles the failure of his politics of unity and hope. There are those on the right declaring Obama's presidency a failure barely an eighth of the way into it. There are those in the center starting to wonder whether supporting the president was a good idea. And there are those on the left who feel as though the glacial pace of change represents a betrayal of their faith in their chosen one.
But then there are those, like myself, who recognize the enormity of the tasks that President Obama has taken on, who know the bureaucracy of government, and can acknowledge how remarkable his accomplishments have been despite the disappointments. I still believe that he is the best person to be running the country at this time, and I think he's doing a tremendous job of it under the circumstances. Is he perfect? No. Do I wish he had done some things differently? Yes. Am I still glad I voted for him? You'd better believe it. So I do my best to tune out the gloom-and-doomers and keep faith in the idea that, in the long run, when we've lived through more 24-hour news cycles than we care to remember, the country will be back on the right track and once again an example for the world.
And I divert myself from all of this by going down South Capitol Street to watch the Nationals. It sometimes feels like diverting myself from a train wreck by watching demolition derby. The very same hope that keeps me believing in the president is what keeps me believing in The Plan. So while people all around me are talking about how the Nationals have no leadership, how their bullpen and defense show no signs of improving, and how the latest trade for yet another prospect leaves us worse off than before, I just nod. Yes, things are bad. And there's no telling when they're going to get better. But just like the president, I keep believing. In both cases only time will tell whether my faith has been misplaced. But I will continue to maintian that faith, in both my president and my team, even though it may be the hardest job in Washington.