I should have sent President Obama a present for his fiftieth birthday last week, but I didn't. A lot of things should be but aren't. Obama should have been an ideal chief of state to reverse the previous twenty years' self-destructive policies, but he wasn't. He should have kept a few promises - not to the banks and military contractors, but to the voters. He should have kept the one about ending torture, but he didn't. He should have kept the implied promise to the middle and working classes to restore their relative earning power to what it was before Ronald Reagan trickled their dollars up to fatten the oligarchy. He didn't do that, either.

Now, a confession. Mea maxima culpa. I voted for him. Yet I am neither disappointed nor disillusioned. My expectations were low (although not as low as Obama has gone). My vote's sole purpose was to send the party of Bush and Cheney into the wilderness for four years. To a libertarian left-winger like me, no administration was more venal than theirs. None had shown such contempt for the Bill of Rights, for due process, and for the guarantee of equality inherent in the Declaration of Independence. How could anyone vote for a party whose leaders plundered the US and Iraqi treasuries to benefit corporations in which they had vested interests? Alas, voting Democrat was not much better.

Read the rest in Taki's Magazine.