Float Like a Butterfly: Obama Steps Back Into the Ring

Every medium known to man, and a few that should be banned under the Geneva Conventions, is pumping candidates’ messages into every home, all begging for a vote. Robocalls at dinner. Texts from a stranger called Dave who needs five dollars right now. Ads between the ads. I suspect many Americans must be sick and tired of being sick and tired.

This is the run-up to the midterms, an election normally greeted with all the enthusiasm of a colonoscopy. But this one feels different. People are palpably ready for something new, hungry for something better. Change is in the air. Or maybe that's just the gas fumes, at six dollars a gallon.

It has been ten long years, with a short intermission courtesy of Joe Biden, who shielded the country from Trump's cruelty, corruption, and spiteful vengeance. Now the nation has sat through the extended-play second season, and the reviews are in: bigger budget, worse script, same villain. I don’t recall anybody asking for a franchise.

We have watched Trump's sycophantic advisors and a lily-livered Congress let their elected leader dodge accountability at every turn. He dropped the promises he made on the campaign trail, then robbed the very people who voted for him. Quite the sleight of hand. Half of American voters lined up to listen to a man who promised to fix their wallets, and the only thing he fixed was the game.

Now with ten or so days to go, a returning warrior stepped out of the shadows and began raining down blows on the sitting president like Muhammad Ali at his peak. Floating like a butterfly. Stinging like a former constitutional law professor.

Welcome back, President Obama. Oh, how we have missed you!

Standing on a stage before a packed stadium, he went through Trump's promises one by one, like a patient teacher marking homework with a red pen. Strap in. Here's what he said.

"He promised he'd get prices under control. He also promised he'd impose tariffs to reduce the deficit. He promised he'd stop getting us involved in unnecessary wars. He promised he'd pass a beautiful healthcare bill that would make everybody's lives better. He's been making these promises since his first time as president.

 Let's see how they've worked out. Now, if you thought everything cost too much before, guess what? Everything costs more now. Your mortgage, your healthcare, your utility bills. Interest rates are up." 

Gas at $4 .60 a gallon. Diesel over $6. Now, I want to be fair, because I believe in facts, and as a former president, I can say this. Sometimes factors beyond your control foil your best-laid plans. Sometimes a president has to deal with things he didn't expect on the campaign trail. But that's not the case here. In this case, this administration's actions are directly responsible for rising costs."

Note the generosity. Obama held the door open for a moment: sometimes the world goes off the rails, sometimes a president is blindsided, we're all reasonable people here. Then he slammed it on the president's fingers, politely, in about four seconds. And "a beautiful healthcare bill" is still out there somewhere, like Bigfoot. Plenty of people swear it exists but nobody has a photograph.

He turned to Iran.

"Now I want you to think about the war in Iran. The original rationale was that we were going to make them bend the knee and give up their nuclear programme and nuclear weapons. Iran didn't have nuclear weapons! We had curbed their nuclear programme because I put in place a deal that everybody acknowledged had kept them from getting nukes.

I engaged in diplomacy.

Here we are, seven months later, six months after they declared victory. Our allies and bases have been attacked. American soldiers have been killed. Hundreds of Americans have been wounded. Iran is now in a stronger strategic position than before the war started.

And by the way, it's not over. It's still going on. Meanwhile, you've got the defence secretary, who is laser-focused on important matters like the jawlines and testosterone levels of our troops. How much time do you think this man spends in front of the mirror every day? These are not serious people, and we are paying the price for their lack of seriousness."

Read that again. Victory was declared, bunting went up, somebody probably got a medal, and the war carried on regardless, apparently not having been told it had lost. And in the middle of a shooting war, the man running the Pentagon is worried about jawlines. Nothing says national security like a Department of Defense that moonlights as a men's grooming salon. Somewhere a sergeant is dodging incoming fire while being asked if he's hydrating his skin.

The juicy part came next. Tariffs!

"Our current president loves tariffs. Loves them. That's his one economic policy. Tariffs are going to be great. The greatest tariffs ever. He was warned at the time: when you impose tariffs, consumers pay the tab. It's not just the goods we buy that are imported from other countries. This does not lower prices. The weirdest thing is, he's the toughest when it comes to tariffs and trade wars with that well-known evil empire, Canada.

That historical adversary of ours. Canada. Canada. It's your neighbour, a few minutes' drive over the bridge. They are the nicest people. But now we've made them so mad, as they are constantly being abused. And rather than these tariffs bringing down the deficits, they're driving up your prices.

We are running a debt to the tune of $40 trillion. What happened? The only bill they have passed of any significance was a trillion-dollar tax break that mostly benefits the richest Americans."

Canada. The country that apologises when you step on its foot. Trump looked at the map, squinted, and said, "There. That's where the evil is." Out of every country on the planet, he picked the one that says "sorry" to a door it has just walked into.

And the deficit hawks? The ones who used to wail about the national debt on every cable channel at all hours? Gone quiet. 

Obama turned to the  subject of home renovations.

"I don't know if you've noticed, but he is very focused on home renovation. The guy is building a ballroom that is bigger than the White House. Paved over the Rose Garden. Put a helicopter pad on the south lawn. And then there is the gold. He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory."

I want that last line cross-stitched on a pillow. A ballroom bigger than the house it's attached to isn't a renovation, it's a guest who builds a bigger house on your front lawn and then bills you for the bricks. While he’s busy doing all of this the energy  bill sis are over the moon. But the gold, the gold is magnificent.

Now the coup de grâce. Corruption.

"We've got a US ambassador shaking down a donor to pay off her $100,000 credit card bills; a Venezuelan billionaire wanted a pardon for $50 million. He paid it, and lo and behold, the pardon fell out of the sky.

We have never seen a president excel at straight-up grifting like this. Never seen a president so intent on selling favours like this. We have lost count. We have lost count of all the deals he and his family have made. You can't keep up. Meme coins, taxpayer-funded contracts for his kids' companies. Nobody disputes this. Nobody denies it. So how do you do that when you're supposed to be looking out for you?"

A pardon that falls out of the sky. Lovely. Most of us wait for rain. Some people just pay fifty million dollars and get a miracle, delivered, presumably with a bow on it. And meme coins? The leader of the free world has a side hustle that sounds like something a nineteen-year-old pitched online at three in the morning. And the kids' companies are doing nicely, thank you, courtesy of your dollar. Nobody disputes it. Nobody denies it. And nobody does anything about it. Congress is it seems is there only for decoration. Very expensive decoration that comes with  a pension.

Then came the pitch, the reason a former president had stepped out of retirement and into a stadium in the first place.

"This election is our last best chance to at least rein in some of this administration's outrageous behaviour . It’s  the circuit breaker in the system. We have to flip that circuit breaker. We need to bring some accountability to this government."

A circuit breaker. I like it.

A circuit breaker is the dullest, most unglamorous object in the house. It has no gold on it. It has no ballroom. It has never been on television. It sits in the basement or up in the roof doing its job quietly, and the only time anyone thinks about it is when the lights go out. Which, if you've been following this, is about now.

So back to those exhausted Americans, sick and tired of being sick and tired. There is an old cure for that. It involves a pencil, a piece of paper and about ten minutes on a Tuesday. Obama says the house has been shorting out for years. The lights flicker, the bills climb, and somebody has slapped gold paint over the scorch marks and called it a renovation. The switch is down in the basement or in the roof. It won't flip itself. After ten years in the dark, it's time somebody found the stairs.