Day 20: A Fax to the White House

Very busy tonight. Took a break and started to write a 1-paragraph fax to the WH (black ball-point pen on unlined paper) but it got away from me and ended up two pages long, and tackling two separate subjects. The first is of course the environment, and was specifically referencing the excellent record President Obama has built up (largely inconspicuously) of environmentally positive executive orders, but the second is the astonishing statement by Robert Gibbs that the President was “surprised and frustrated” with the outcome of the MA election. Normally I try to avoid jamming multiple subjects into a single letter or fax. Not tonight; I was just too pissed off.

Dear Mr. President,

Two things:

First, despite the lack of legislative action on climate-change issues and the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen Conference, your first year in office has soon some good results in environmental areas through your use of executive orders. Thank you.

Second, I gather that you told Robert Gibbs that you were “surprised and frustrated” by the outcome of my state’s recent election. As a MA-07 resident and a lifetime progressive Democrat, I was certainly frustrated, but I wasn’t surprised. You need to get some new advisors; the ones you’ve got are hiding the truth from you. We are the people who worked to get you elected, donated beyond our budgets, called till we were hoarse. And what have we gotten? Geithner. Bernanke. Summers. Howard Dean excluded. Surrender fromthe Administration, on almost every front. It’s a politician’s prerogative to change his mind, but it is buzarre that after this past year you could not be aware of the growing despondency of the (formerly energized) progressives. And in a nutshell, that is what lost MA-Sen. Martha Coakley ran a terrible campaign, but her failure is a local one by comparison. November 2010 is going to be very unpleasant if you and your senior staff continue through the next six months as you have over the past twelve.

We need an aggressive president who will tackle these issues without a need for the conforting illusions of “bipartisanship.” We elected YOU president, not Olympia Snowe or Joe Lieberman.

Anyway, congratulations on your many successful executive orders on the environment, including increased mpg standards, protecting many Federal sites by blocking Bush rules, strengthening the EPA, establishing the new Wilderness Area, toughening smog rulings, and many others. I applaud this aspect of your presidency without reservation.

Thank you,

Warren Senders

No fancy verbiage there.