Twenty Promises Barack Obama Made to America

I haven’t been writing here all that much lately, much perhaps to your RSS feeders delight. I simply found myself complaining about things more often than anything else, aside from the fact that I’ve been traveling so much and writing about those adventures on my other site. I have been mostly writing the occasional bit of prose here, with the hope that those short stories can inspire a little happiness rather than fuel the fires of anti-Bush, anti-progress that burn brightly enough in other places more poignant than my own. Today I’m going to break from my new trend of sticking to descriptive prose, however, and make a simple list.

I’m making this list simply because I feel that Barack Obama has a lot on his plate, and I hold him to clean that plate. Many people have mentioned that there is too much for him to do, and he can only do so much. But he has promised us to do exactly that: so much. And anything short of that will just be another Presidency, which is not what we’re after, which is not what we all did so much to get him elected.

So here it is, my list, Twenty Promises Barack Obama Made to America on this Inauguration Day.

  1. Optimism will lead us.
  2. An end to small arguments and lies, and meaningless words.
  3. We’ll remake America as a great country, out of the ashes of the past 8 years.
  4. We’ll rebuild the economy.
  5. Create new jobs building roads, bridges, and high tech gear to bind us together.
  6. Give science it’s rightful place, not as something to be feared, but used to help humanity.
  7. Use technology to improve health care and lower it’s costs.
  8. We’ll use our natural, renewable resources – sun, wind and soil, not oil – to fuel our lives.
  9. Transform our learning institutions to become as great as they need to be.
  10. Eliminate failing government programs and expand those that work.
  11. Hold the government accountable for spending our money.
  12. Focus not on our economy’s growth for growth’s sake, but for it’s impact on every person’s quality of life.
  13. Re-establish America as a peaceful leader of the world.
  14. Re-establish and protect our individual freedoms instead of handing them over in fear.
  15. Leave Iraq.
  16. Make peace with Afghanistan.
  17. Help any Third World country who wants it to improve their farms and clean their waters, to help them with their health and their education.
  18. Stop America’s excessive use of resources.
  19. Hold every American responsible to help ensure these ideals go forward.
  20. That all of the items above will happen.

I say we hold him as responsible to them all as I hope he holds us, and we hold ourselves, to #19.

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