As IF Times

link Peggy Noonan: We Just Dont Understand – WSJ.com.

It ain’t him.  It’s the people.  When the candidate was first thrust into the larger public eye from the village politics of Illinois, he was immediately acclaimed to have the skill set and accomplishments of someone twice his age and experience.  In his own words, the rise of the oceans would slow, the earth would begin to heal yada yada yada.  Using a baseball analogy, he was a closer who was also expected to field balls and hit home runs as well.  Naturally, he is doomed to failure since he is only good at one small aspect of the game.

Barely two years after the coronation, even the ardent supporters are moving away from their blind support of the incumbent.  The 26 people who still watch David Letterman heard his wisecrack about the ‘one term president’ recently.  What changed?  It’s not as if the job description changed.  Put simply, our guy was never qualified for the job in the first place.  Without benefit of ANY meaningful business or administrative experience, the complex decisions that have to be considered as leader of the free world has left him floundering because of poor experience and poorer advisers. 

A perfect storm of disillusionment with the former President, the enormous influence of Oprah which mobilized an historically quiet demographic, a stalling economy and an extremely partisan media brought someone into office without sufficient scrutiny of his character.  Rather, all the various groups that supported his candidacy projected upon him their own versions of what kind of person he was.   The 1979 movie, Being There  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_There) , featured Peter Sellers as a simple gardener, but was considered by his high society employer as some kind of savant because of his pithy and earthy responses to complex questions, eventually providing advice to the President of the United States.  A bitingly satirical movie has turned into real life only decades later.

Lots of barbs have been thrown at the President and that is expected of any politician.  Some criticisms are certainly deserved but many criticisms from his own fold are likely projections of disappointment by the people who had unrealistic expectations of his ability.  He just happened to be in the right spot at the time.  As is now obvious, talking is the easy part; the hard part is the doing.  Being there isn’t enough.  The President is not responsible for disappointing people; the people can only be disappointed with themselves.

link Lenore Skenazy: Whatever Happened to Walking to School? – WSJ.com.

A sentiment which is probably shared by most of my admittedly older generation.  But I also add that we chopped wood, fed the animals and drew water from the well before our mile long jaunt to school.  Uphill of course, both ways.  In a related article from a  little while back,       http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37399539/ns/health-behavior/      there is an obvious pattern of smothering the current generation of children and ironically creating young people that are ill-equipped to deal with life’s vicissitudes.

At some point over the past few generations, it became unseemly to make kids endure ‘hardship’, whatever that definition means.  For some kids, hardship may mean working at a part time job to help with school costs, whereas for others, it may mean appearing at school in the BMW instead of the Mercedes.  The consequence of over parenting is a society of people somewhat insulated from the realities of life.  Suffering is an abstract notion. 

Kids should suffer.  In all of the animal kingdom, at some point, the progeny gets pushed out into the cold hard world and the cycle repeats itself.  You don’t see birds bringing  worms to feed middle aged birds in the nest.  You don’t see lionesses bringing  freshly caught wildebeest to teenage lions at home.  Unlike the natural animal world, humans, at least in western society, have moved towards sheltering their children from every imaginable event that can cause harm.  The result is a world full of people like Prince Charles of Windsor, wholly out of touch with reality and insisting on the Grey Poupon at dinner.

It’s really debatable whether the world is a more dangerous place for kids now than in the ’50’s or 60’s when kids were allowed to be kids and not faberge eggs requiring delicate handling.  It’s a wonder that Johnson and Johnson stays in business given that collapsing skinned knee incidents must mean the implosion of band-aid demand.  Nowadays, a cut finger means a trip to the local hospital, a fee to the HMO and a week’s rest in bed.

Admittedly, my comments are a bit self serving.  I’m annoyed that the charming days of cheap child labour to mow lawns, paint garages and washing cars are gone. As well, the cleaning of chimneys has to be done by hired professionals.   Oh well, maybe they’ll be kind to us when choosing our retirement homes.