THIS IS JUST A NOTE to let you all know that I am out of the hospital since Saturday afternoon.
The surgery had a complication, which lengthened my stay from overnight to almost a week.
But I'm home now, and happy to be back in the fold, though still a little weakened from the process.
I probably won't be back to posting daily right away, but I hope to manage at least sporadic posts until I'm completely recovered.
In line with that—today's topic:
The television was on earlier, with a news story about the egg-rolling festivities at the White House.
There was a cute scene of the President attempting to help a child about the age of one of my grandchildren.
He tried to encourage the little girl, showing her how to roll her egg, but the second he turned his back, to mime running after the egg, she simply did what my own grandchildren so often do when confronted with an adult agenda that isn't really their own.
She threw the spoon on the ground, done with the entire process.
It would be easy to hang an entire post on the little girl's natural good sense, and the frequent mistakes adults make when we project our agendas on our children.
I'm reminded, for example, of a moment in a children's museum when I watched a mother determined to engage her child over a puzzle.
She would pick up random pieces, and put them on her head, or in other odd places, in order to get the child to laugh.
But she wasn't succeeding, and it was clear to all watching why—the child was intent on putting the puzzle together properly, and the mother's behavior was obstructing his goal.
Almost every other piece she picked up to clown around with was one he had just successfully fit into the puzzle.
But I digress.
It would, as I said, be easy to build a post around the child, but the more telling part of this video is about the President of the United States.
Having tried to help the child, he was distracted for a moment by another child who approached him with a question.
He turned around to discover that the first child clearly had no interest in the task at all.
His response? Appreciative laughter.
And he moved on.
This little drama could easily be a parable explaining the entire Obama Administration.
Straight through his first year, and now into the second, one of the criticisms of the President has been that he's not tough enough—that he didn't use his party's substantial lead in Congress to simply ignore the Republicans (like they did to the Democrats for eight years) and pass whatever the Hell he wanted to, using every trick in the book.
But those who make this charge don't understand who Barack Obama is—or, in my estimation, how lucky we are to have him in the White House at this time.
He has done lots of things I don't agree with, made decisions I wouldn't have made.
But it's not about the decisions—about the product—it's about the process.
Obama is not a great president because he makes great decisions.
He's a great president because he believes in the process.
Remember how Bush used to brag about "trusting his gut," about not listening to the American people?
Obama is the opposite of that.
That little girl refused to go along with his agenda, and his immediate, instinctive, response was a laugh that said "good for you."
I guess this will be a bit more than a note to let you know I'm out of the hospital...
Next time: The Spiritual Disease in the American Body Politic
