Obama, Go West!

One source of many Obama supporters’ dismay is their discovery that he lacks the rebellious cowboy spirit his predecessors expressed almost as though it were genetic. “Go West,” this cowboy spirit commands: go to the Wild West, conquer it and make it productive; face a challenge and succeed.

All previous presidents have assaulted their own West, including Bush, who, though he was no hero, had an enterprise in which he risked all of his capital; he exposed himself to ruin in order to achieve power.

Barack Obama has never conquered his own West. He seems to lack a pioneer spirit, even though he lived his early years west of the West, in Hawaii and Indonesia.

Returned to the continent, he did not take any initiative to improve himself aside from higher education. He wasn’t enterprising: he earned minimum wage when he was first employed.

These are laudable activities, but they lack the romantic aura required of American public figures – excluding military and diplomats, who don’t have much public accountability.

The character of a country of adventurers who believe their own legend forces the leader to launch exemplary actions before those who do not wish to be state employees or to be financially dependent on tax money.

The most ambitious of Obama’s plans is health care. Apparently there is no better system than publicly funded health insurance, like the one he proposed, though this proposal has been devitalized.

Many U.S. citizens, though they sustain large charity networks for the poor, old and young, in cooperation with the government plans Medicare and Medicaid, reject the state imposition to pay for the health of those who, having income, spend money like cowboys and fail to put aside savings for their own health. Many Americans say that those who want to succeed must earn it themselves.

After failing in the health bill and in Massachusetts’ recent election, maybe Obama’s attack against the bigger banks is now his own journey into West, his cowboy adventure. For now, it seems that he has pulled out his Colt.