I’ve been so busy that I never found the time to make a good comparison on Obama’s promise’s before the election and what he has actually delivered so far.
Still, I’d like to share with you this article (Obama’s nuclear policy takes one step forward and two steps back) as there is a paragraph in it that reminded me on how dependant our actions are on the reciprocity factor.
On one hand Obama managed to bring down the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal from just above 20000 to just below 20000 nuclear warheads. In my view an effort that’s symbolic at best. On the other hand he provided $8 billion in loan guarantees for the building of nuclear reactors in the U.S. (for the purpose of generating power domestically), and proposed another $40 billion more.
Why such a decision? Here’s a line from the Scientific American article above: “Obama has been pro-nuclear-energy since his days as an Illinois state senator and U.S. senator, when he accepted donations from the giant Illinois-based nuclear utility Exelon.”
Two top Exelon (nuclear plant corporation) officials, Frank M. Clark, executive vice president, and John W. Rogers Jr., a director, are among Obama’s largest fund-raisers. So. Would that have something to do with the decisions he’s taking?
I believe that many politicians have great, clean, and visionary ideas when they are young and not in power. But by the time they actually make it to power, they will have received so much support (mostly in terms of I’ll scratch your back and you promise to scratch mine), that they become puppets, not directly of the people they are indebted to, but of their own feeling to reciprocate to the wishes of their (by then) friends..
Is that what politics are? The art of compromising at the cost of ideology, authenticity, and vision?
Tags: exelon, favors in politics, nuclear energy, obama, reciprocity in politics