It’s not every morning that you run into one of the most powerful men in the country in relatively intimate and unguarded surroundings, so today as I was boarding the shuttle down to DC and saw White House senior advisor David Axelrod seated by a window just behind the first class section, I decided I had to seize the moment. My parents gave me “change the world” disease when I was young, after all, and I probably will never shake it.
The aisle was full in front of me anyway and thus I was literally standing across from him. Knowing I might only have a minute, I quickly pondered what to say.
“Is this ‘change we can believe in’?” I asked. He didn’t respond at first so I repeated the question to make clear I was talking to him. It was his slogan, after all, that he and the rest of the Obama ’08 campaign, had offered to the nation.
Axelrod looked up calmly, peering at me over the glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. What are you referring to, he asked.
Jeez, there wasn’t really time to properly answer that. I decided to keep it simple, rather than try to explain why I think Obama isnt doing enough to change how DC works. Keeping my voice as friendly as possible, I said, “The health care bill. It’s so watered down with compromises.”
“We’re just trying to get the bill to conference,” he responded. And it wasn’t clear what would be in the final bill, he added. I looked at him skeptically.
“Do you have health insurance?” he asked me. Yes, I said, a bit nonplussed. “Well, we’re trying to get coverage to the millions of people who don’t,” he said. (It struck me later that perhaps he thought I, a 40-something white man, was perhaps not an Obama voter.)
Don’t get me wrong, I said. I want that too. But I wish you’d “be less poll-driven and lead the country.” (Morgan Freeman’s performance as Nelson Mandela in Invictus was on my mind, having seen it Saturday night. Go see it and you’ll know what I’m referring to.)
He looked like he wanted to argue the point, but by now two air marshals — one seated in the aisle near Axelrod and one who had gotten up from the row behind him to stand near me, were looking a bit unhappy. I decided it was time to find my seat. “Good luck,” I wished him, and walked away.
December 15, 2009