Dear President Obama,
Indeed, it brings my heart immeasurable joy to be able to write such a greeting. On behalf of myself and my family, I extend to you a most heartfelt welcome to the office of President of the United States.
Mr. President, as you well know and so eloquently expressed in your inaugural address to the nation, we are facing great challenges in the days, months, and even years to come. Following years of the most hypocritical and self-serving assertions made by the powerful and well-connected to loosen regulations on almost every aspect of the world of commerce and finance, in return for which they behaved with all the moral responsibility of rutting goats, we now find ourselves deep in an economic recession if not in fact in an economic depression. Billions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury have been thrown at the problem with an effect equal to that as if these same dollars had been thrown to the four winds; no one knows in which direction they went or where they finally landed. People are losing their jobs by the tens of thousands, and as ours is the only industrialized nation lacking a national system of guaranteed medical care for all our people, relying instead upon our nation’s employers and the employees themselves to bear the ever-increasing cost burden laid upon them by a for-profit insurance industry (a great shame upon our nation in and of itself), these same people will soon be without care for themselves or their families should they become sick or injured.
Then of course, there is the war – or perhaps better described as “wars.” Chasing an amorphous international band of criminals who are, according to the Koran and Moslem scholars the world around, unjustly waging jihad against Saudi Arabia and all nations they deem, correctly or not, sympathetic to the ruling family of that kingdom, our nation has committed our men and women to the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan. In the case of the former, the reasons for doing so have been shown to be, at the very least, in error. In the case of the latter, where the battle might have more justifiably been joined, while the determination of the soldiers and relief workers on the ground has been nothing short of heroic, the will of our nation’s administration has been less than sufficient. Thousands of Americans and untold numbers of Iraqis and Afghans have died as a result. Thousands more have been maimed. Though the former administration has been willing to sacrifice not only our civil liberties but our very moral standing in the world to do so, the criminals have not to this day been brought to justice.
Mr. President, I find no shame in telling you that, like millions of others who, either in person or through one of the many forms of media broadcasting the event as it happened, witnessed your taking the oath of office, I shed tears of joy upon your pronouncement of “so help me God.” It is as if a great weight was lifted from my heart and for the first time in many years I felt that our country would one day rise again to become the great and good nation that its founders hoped that it would be. In speaking those few words inscribed in the Constitution aloud, you renewed the hope in us which had almost been extinguished.
Yet as you said, our journey to revival and renewal is not to be either short or easy. It will require us all working together regardless of race, creed, or affiliation to restore us to our former glory. This we are willing to do. But in order to ensure that all which needs to be done is put into motion, we need a leader. By an overwhelming majority, we have chosen you for this task. Unlike as has occasionally and unjustly been the accusation levied by a few obscenely well-paid, socially isolated, and bellicose pundits, we do not see you as the messiah or a benevolent dictator; rather you are to the millions of us all across the land awaiting your direction that for which we have long hoped – a highly intelligent, ethically upright, and eminently competent person who has deigned for the good of the nation to accept the most difficult job presently known to the world: president of our free citizenry founded on the premises so eloquently put forth in the Preamble to our Constitution.
Gather together our nation’s best minds, create a plan for our revival and renewal, and charge us with our responsibilities that it may be realized; we are willing and ready to serve. When our spirits falter, and falter at times they will, remind us of what it is we are seeking to do and impart to us words of hope that it can be achieved. If your spirit falters, look to your faith and your family of course, but also look as well to the millions of us who will be daily praying for your health, intellect, and leadership to remain strong and vibrant. It is also my personal prayer that in as you have given up so much as a private citizen to shoulder this greatest of leadership burdens, that we the people of the United States of America not fall to petty bickering, gossip, and strife, but remain steadfast in our support of your work as our president. Although you may already have heard it often for all that you have done and are about to do, please allow me to close this letter to you with a simple but in absolute earnestness common phrase of gratitude – thank you.
Your fellow citizen,
John E. Riutta
