Obama’s brand of change disappointing

Mark Isaacs, Las Vegas

Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009 | 2:04 a.m.

I am saddened to say I am one of President Barack Obama’s previously ardent supporters who has become disillusioned by his administration.

No one was more excited than me when he announced his intention to run for the presidency. To me he represented a return to the ideals and idealism of John F. Kennedy.

But after learning his health care plan will not be fully implemented until 2015, that it will not be single-payer based and probably not even include a public option, that he has reneged on his campaign pledge to make health care negotiations transparent on C-SPAN, that he plans to escalate the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, that he has not completely pulled the plug on Yucca Mountain, that he appointed repeated tax scofflaw Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary after promising a new standard of ethics, and that he will likely sit on the sidelines while corporate executives whose companies received massive bailouts are rewarded with $33 billion in bonuses this year, I have lost all faith in him and my hope for “change you can believe in.”

Candidate Obama was the redeemer of the promise of JFK I had waited for more than two generations to appear, my last best hope for the future. Now that he has let me down, however, I am likely to give up on government as an engine of change once and for all. That tens of millions more like me feel the same is President Obama’s biggest disappointment of all.