Change nihal.com Can Believe In

Last Tuesday’s inauguration reminded me of turning thirty. What once seemed impossibly distant rushed toward reality. The buildup was overwhelming, the pre-gameday hype thick with clichés. But a week later I was the same Nihal, with the same 55 mph fastball and ability to touch my nose with my tongue. So I found the talk cheap in President Obama’s inaugural address. A few suggestions on how to bank the change:

“We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals… Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.”

Federal agents walk onto the set while Hannity and Limbaugh are doing their shows, snap the cuffs on them, and begin to lead them away. “On what charges do you dare arrest me!?” they’d thunder. “Charges? No, it’s just that the President believes you are a threat to national security,” the agents would answer. “Gitmo awaits.” Instantly these two would see what it feels like to be on the wrong side of a system of justice that has surely swept up innocents and given extremists a powerful weapon to whip up hatred against America. Point made, the federal agents would unsnap the cuffs and leave the two to wallow in the irony (and perhaps a bit more, if their bowels behaved badly during the mock arrests).

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

True to the fears of his most paranoid foes, President Obama signs an executive order banning the use of public airwaves for debates on issues where a layperson can take a side without thinking twice. Abortion, gay marriage and gun control are three examples that jump to mind. Because while we’ve been arguing about whether gay couples can have abortions during deer season, gays with health insurance have been subsidizing straights without it. Hunters in Arkansas and the hunted in North Philadelphia both suffer when the federal government refuses to legislate cleaner air. Thus muzzled, CNN, Fox and the gang will be forced to turn the spotlight on issues that can’t be reduced to a 15 second soundbyte or three-minute debate. I think it’s called “reporting.”

“In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned.”

After an administration led by a man who earned none of what was handed to him, President Obama should strike a different tone in his first State of the Union address. To put the emphasis on earning and saving, he should replace the income tax with a national sales tax on consumption. He should promise to stop living off the levees, airports and trains that our parents and grandparents built, and build some of our own. Give interest-free loans to anyone that’s worked hard enough in high school to go to college. And provide an honest accounting of what we’ve promised to pay in Medicare and Social Security benefits ($54 trillion), how much we’ve saved so far ($0), and whose taxes will be raised and whose benefits will be slashed to close the gap.

The icing on the cake would be á la carte cable pricing, where I could buy just the four channels I actually watch and not be forced to buy a package that includes the Hallmark Channel. Lifetime and E! desperately applying for federal bailout money? Now that’s change I could believe in.