Dear President-Elect Obama

Dear President-Elect Obama:

First let me ensure that this gets off to a positive start by declaring, “I’m a 68 year old demographic escapee white guy who voted for you, and although you face colossal challenges, I am confident that that you and your team of rivals and cohorts will be up to the task.”

I am also aware that you are a very intelligent, thoughtful, and perceptive man who wants to restore the greatness of our country, however—and I hesitate to say this— I have a deep, gnawing sensation that you and your team may have seriously underestimated the internecine, Machiavellian guile of some of your still-evolving political peers “across the aisle,” and may be even under the aisle in some sort of dank catacomb. Perhaps you---and I as well---were simply overcome by the extraordinary significance and emotion of this moment in not just American, but world history, and that even after our pulse rates returned to normal and the confetti, along with a lot of painful memories of the not too distant past, were swept away, we failed to notice that you may have become the unwitting victim of an insidious plot.

We have all seen those movies, whether it’s a sci-fi, western, or war one, in which the leaders of a group decide to send in one guy to perform an impossible and life-threatening mission. “Send in Johnson. He can do it.” And Johnson rushes bravely out to take on an army of killer robots, a dust storm of rustlers driving 5,000 head of crazed longhorns, or a German Panzer regiment, armed only with a flare gun and a Swiss Army knife minus all its features except the bottle opener. Of course, Johnson may or may not complete the mission, but two things are inevitably constant: Johnson never makes it back and most notably, Johnson is always a Black guy.

You may think me impertinent or possibly loony, Mr. President Elect, but your situation, I fear, is eerily similar to any of these scenarios, except for the salient difference of it’s being a live performance on the world stage.

And it is, I feel, the Neocons who are the parlous plotters, and that revelation, of course, requires no stretch of even the staunchest Heritage Foundation member’s credulity. These Neocons, a word which is, indictingly short for Neoconmen, are a shrewd and nefarious bunch, in fact, I think they should replace Iraq as the third member of the Axis of Evil, though I doubt you’ll be borrowing that phrase or anything else from their arsenal of pejoratives . These people eventually realized that they screwed up not only the Iraq situation, but the entire War on Terror, the environment, healthcare, energy policy, our reputation in the rest of the world, and finally, the 7th Horseman of the Apocalypse, the economy. And being of cowardly natures, they certainly they did not want to take on the task of trying to resolve possibly the greatest disaster in our nation’s history, America’s real life version of deadly robots, stampeding cattle, and predatory Panzers. But, “Hey, Carl Rove thought, “We’ve got a Black guy running for president. It’s perfect. May be those dumbass Evangelicals are right after all. GOD IS ON OUR SIDE!”

Then it was ( “What a total” ) Dick Cheney who snarled excitedly, “That’s it—Evangelicals! We’ll get McCain to pick one for his VP running mate. And he’ll do our bidding or we’ll just make up some more stuff about him and his family again. He’s 72 years old. Even the most rabid Republican ideologue won’t want to put one of those Bible-toting whackos in direct line to the presidency.”

Hence Sarah Palin entered and John McCain exited stage far right, dragging her and her mangled sentences behind.

The stage was set and you, President Elect Obama, entered stage left, and adroitly walked to center of the stage.

And so here you are, President Obama, poised with your brilliant and highly capable team, ready to take on the economy, the first of the multiple imbroglios foisted on you by the aforementioned nasty Neocons.

But, as I said in the beginning, I have complete confidence that you will succeed, and I also am aware that you can’t do it alone, since you did say, “Yes WE can, not yes I can.”

Therefore, I do have a suggestion ( my contribution ) besides watching out for Neocons: I would like to see you put Carl Rove on your team, and the next time you need someone to deal with the robots, cattle, tanks, or the like, you can send a doughy white guy. At least, may be the movies might change.

Respectfully,
A Can-Do American