Patience? What’s that???
Recently, Bloomberg News carried an article detailing American’s loss of confidence with Our president. They have lost faith in his handling of the economy, the Gulf oil spill, the healthcare woes, etc. What is striking in all these cases is the timing. The president hasn’t been in office a full year yet, and already fickle constituents who hailed him as a agent of change have lost patience, ready to drop support for him and his political party and fill political vacancies with supposedly conservative pundits railing against Obama’s policies and choices.
Hardly a year into office, hardly time to advance a political agenda, hardly time to settle in and address the political emergencies and nightmares that are handed off from presidential office holder to office holder. Why hardly a year? My own opinion is that American’s have gotten used to immediate gratification, and forgotten how to make hard sacrifices for future gains.
Many people also seem to have lost touch witness reality with respect to how hard it can be to be the major political leader of a huge organization. While it is claimed that they don’t directly blame Obama for the problems which started under Bush, they seem to think that these problems can be fixed with the snap of one’s fingers. Why does nobody acknowledge understanding that the problems inherited by one president from another cannot be solved by edict the moment one steps into office? These immediate issues have to take priority over the advancement of one’s agenda, and they cannot simply be wished away by the wave of one’s hands.
What’s happened to patience in America? I would argue that America’s become a nation of citizens who expect an Internet presidency: instant answers to all problems; instant gratification for all issues; instant connection to all issues; instant resolution. Economy in a pickle? Oil leak in the Gulf? Google the answer and implement immediately. No time for sacrifice, no time for fact gathering, no time for analysis. Simply Google for the answer, implement and done.
Internet complacency, lack of critical thinking, unrealistic expectations, and instant gratification have converged to make American’s less tolerant of things that, in the past, people would’ve understood can’t be solved in weeks or months.
But, that’s just my opinion.
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