Obama's Conversion to Job Creation (After 12 Months), Sadly Looks Like He's Trying to Save His Own.

[David Zephyr]

I'm sorry. I'm not going to be all "team player" here. This President screwed up a historic moment in time and pissed away all his political capital and good will with the American People last year. His sudden, born-again conversion to talking about job creation and dealing with residential real estate crisis just sounds phony.

His new head-turning conversion to caring about jobs and foreclosures sounds more like a deathbed conversion than an actual one. Actually, after Massachusetts, it pretty much is a deathbed conversion.

Right or wrong, the perception that Obama blew the first 25% of his Presidency is one that is congealed now within the American psyche: Obama ignored the plight of the struggling working class and the unemployed and the housing catastrophe, while he nursed Wall Street, threw billions at banking criminals and sent even more American young people into wars overseas.

As a Democrat, I am already cringing at knowing how hollow his speech Wednesday night is going to sound. I plan on having two Martinis before I watch him. I only hope that after he's turned his head left to right and then back left again as he makes his speech from the teleprompter, that he doesn't make any more foolish assertions like, "I may not be the first President to tackle health care, but I will be the last!" And, someone please get a message to his speech writers to drop that ridiculous and overused phrase of "Make no mistake about it" from his language. If I grind my teeth anymore I will have to get dentures.

Still, I'm nearly on my knees in gratitude that finally, after 12 months, someone in that tone-deaf White House figured out that real people with real families want jobs and job security and they want to be able to continue living in their homes. Ahem...those would be the people that elected Obama.

Unfortunately, it's just that now, when Obama talks about saving jobs, after one long excruciating year of neglect, it sounds like the job he wants to save is his own. And the American People don't want to hear him talking about jobs, they expect him to deliver jobs. Money talks and bullshit walks.

The missed opportunity of his first year is Shakespearean it's so tragic.

Can he turn this around now? I am not sure he can. His fall with the approval of the American People is eyebrow raising. Trust is something earned. Earned.

Although it will never happen, President Obama should look the American People in the eye in his national address and square it with them, and own up to the clearly mistaken priorities his first 12 months. If he doesn't, if he tries to just gloss it over with self-excusing shit like "we've made progress, but I'm not happy with it", then his speech will be, as they say in Texas, a turd in the punchbowl.

Obama has blown it. He should man up and acknowledge it publicly, and then get to work like hell to create jobs. Any thing less, he will look like just another smooth-talking politician in a suit...and his sacred bond of trust with the American people, already damaged, will only suffer more.

OK, OK. I will go all "team player" after all. Why? Because Obama's wasted first year has hurt not just hurt his own credibility, but that of our Democratic Team in the Congress. Democrats in the House took Obama at his word, followed his priorites and now those House Members are in real trouble this November as they all face re-election in a very hostile political environment.

Our team took one for their leader all last year. They followed his lead. Now, the leader should take this one for the team on Wednesday night and acknowledge his failure and misplaced priorites as those of his own making, not the team's.