Bad Faith

Dear Mr. President,

Please bear with me. This may seem like a shaggy dog story but it’s not. There’s a message here and it has a point. On election night, 2008, after celebrating at the local Democratic headquarters, I went to a sidewalk café with a friend. Everyone was euphoric, passersby were smiling, cheering, high-fiving, the end of the Bush nightmare. Oh, there was that issue of you shrugging off Michelle who came rushing across the stage to greet you in joy, but never mind, I didn’t see it, I was looking away talking to someone when it happened. But my friend saw it, punched me in the shoulder, said, “Did you see that?” No, I didn’t and didn’t want to, it was too heady a moment to spoil, the feeling that finally, justice and reason would return to the land and we would once again abide by the principles that we thought were foundational to our values. As we sat at that sidewalk café, a stranger approached and struck up a conversation. We invited him to join us, share our wine and good spirits, and he did. He pulled up a chair and joined us in conversation, but after five or ten minutes he began to get aggressive and argumentative, insulted us and then, without warning, grabbed the wine and took off down the street. A waiter standing nearby started after him and I called out to him to stop, “Let him go. If he needs the wine that much, let him have it,” but it did dampen our spirits some and we left soon after. Now, reflecting on it, I realize it was an omen. That stranger conned us, acted in bad faith. He was not celebrating your victory nor was he interested in joining us in celebration, only in stealing our wine. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and, while his deception was not nearly on the same scale as yours, it was, nevertheless, a violation of trust, acceptance and good will. Your election, so joyful, so liberating, was also a betrayal, Mr. President, a betrayal so profound, so deep, so disturbing, I still find it hard to express. You have disillusioned an entire generation and more, created distrust of government and anyone running for office. You have made cynics of us all. Whenever I think of that incident with the stranger on the night of November 4, 2008, I see it as a harbinger of things to come, of the way you deceived us all and then betrayed us, robbed us of trust and faith and our belief that justice and right will prevail. You robbed us of our birthright, Mr. President, and that is, perhaps, the worst crime of all.