Sorry, I can’t help myself.  Don’t read this.  Stop right now.

You’re still reading.  Stop.  It’s just my own political whining.

Fine.  Whatever.  Read.  I don’t care.

Remember Henry Clay?  No?  JFK said he was one of the five greatest senators of all time.  Why?  Compromise.  Lincoln (a senator from Illinois, no less) thought Clay was awesome.  Those guys could compromise up a storm.  Lincoln, The Great Emancipator, voted in the Senate for a law that required the return of escaped slaves to the south– the Fugitive Slave Act.  It was a compromise just to get along.

Clay, the original Great Compromiser, never made it to the presidency and was primarily, some say, responsible for The War of 1812.  But, boy howdy, could he compromise.  He got a lot of stuff done.  Really.  Sure, he started a war, but he did some good stuff, too.

Lincoln got to be the president.  We all know how that turned out.  Some may argue the actual inevitability and rationale for the Civil War, but you have to admit, it freed the slaves, and he was there.

Enter Obama.  I’ve taken a little heat for my disappointment with his recent actions.  The latest is his agreement that maybe we should drill off the coast for oil.  The politics are such that his polls are showing that it’s an issue with which the Republicans are swaying the opinion of a gullible America.  We have high gas prices.  More supply should lower prices.  Ergo, more drilling means more supply means lower prices.

There’s about fifty different reasons why that’s bunk.  Oil companies are making record profits– that’s money from the pump to their pockets.  Demand for oil is increasing at a huge rate, supply is controlled by a multi-national cartel, and no political solution is going to change the way the market for oil works.  There’s huge environmental risk (and allowed damage) associated with offshore drilling.  The oil companies already have places to drill on land.  And even if we FOUND new oil offshore, it’d be decades before we could do anything with it.  It’s a red herring and a dangerous one.

So what’s Obama say?

Compromise, baby. He’s going to break the deadlock in Congress by compromising on yet another principle.  Maybe we *should* drill offshore if the Republicans will then allow us to get off of oil sooner.  Right?  That makes sense, right?  Republicans just want to drill offshore, and after that, they’ll have it out of their systems, and they’ll work with us to… no, that sounds sort of silly, doesn’t it?

What’s really happening?  Obama’s playing to the crowd.  I imagine he sat down with Nancy Pelosi, she guaranteed him that she’s just not going to allow the subject to come up for discussion, and he was free to say he’d drill right in the capitol reflecting pond.  We’ll lubricate the drills with spotted owl blood and play Toby Keith music to cover the noise.  As long as it passes Congress– which it can’t, but then I said that about war with Iraq.

So, knowing that it’s all a big cynical political joke, shouldn’t I be cheering him on at beating them at their own game?  Maybe.  It just feels dirty.  I’m not cut out to be a politician.  I suppose the source of my anxiety is that I want Americans to know better.  It’s not that hard to look this stuff up.  I suppose, in the broader view, it’s simply better to have a disingenuous person of some virtue in office than what we have now.

Still, imagine a day where we, as a collective nation, put someone into power because he offers his strength of principle on basic issues– like constitutional liberties, environmental protection, equal rights, energy independence, universal healthcare, and education– rather than pandering to our basest fears and misconceptions.

Yeah, I know.  I said “imagine” though, right?