Ms. K—————, et al. above: I’m rarely moved to remark in spaces such as this but your comments brought the following to mind: It is ignorant and no doubt beneath your usual intelligence and sensitivity to apply any economic condition to a President’s inauguration.
The trickle-down failure was devised by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush; Enron and the first Dotcom bubble were fostered under Clinton; the real estate bubble, Halliburton, the banking collapse, and Madoff’s heyday flourished during George W. Bush’s terms. President Obama is the first to assume the office in a state of near-total economic collapse on all fronts since FDR.
Should a more qualified candidate appear, I have little doubt my vote would go to him or her but in the meantime appeals to xenophobia, distrust of womanhood, and catering to ideas of self-centeredness instead of community leave me unimpressed.
I think our vote should be determined not by what we perceive as our similarity to a candidate but rather by whether or not the candidate’s plans will benefit more or fewer people. In the current campaign, the answer is clear enough to me: Obama has a broader, more inclusive, more informed, more decisive, more engaged team and strategy than his opponent. So I will vote for him even though he also represents interests and policies I might not favor.
Additionally, it might be worth having a look here to see what has, as a matter of record, been accomplished in the course of President Obama’s first term.
The matter of influence is a varied and frequently complex one, not least because of its relationship to authenticity, which I address here. I think it’s worth reiterating that I believe being truthful to one’s influences is as much a moral matter as it is a practical one, if not more so.
So we all, one way or another, actively seek influences. I take it as a measure of maturity, however, that one eventually assimilates them into an existing style and builds from there. That is, however much imitative modes might satisfy many performers, I think stopping at the sum of one’s influences is short-sighted.