Daily Times

When the president of the US stands in front of his people to deliver his state of the union address, there is one thing he has to have and that is an abundant supply of personal confidence. This confidence resonates with the masses as the president lays out his agenda and vision along with his pitch to the US people, of how he wants to make their lives better in the future.
There is no doubt that President Barack Obama is a gifted orator and when and wherever he stands and delivers, he does it with clarity and utmost confidence. This year was no exception, and though much of the previously repeated lines were repeated yet again, they were delivered with a renewed vigour and fervour. Americans are very tradition bound and see this event as a roadmap for the year ahead. This president has made huge strides in altering US history by providing a government-sponsored healthcare plan. The plan that his opponents dubbed as ‘Obamacare’, despite all opposition, road blocks, rhetoric, myths, fallacies and objections, is now the law of the land. If nothing else, he is leaving a powerful legacy behind of something that will be remembered as colossal and monumental.
This year he plans on tackling what is another hot button issue: immigration reform. It is another contentious issue, which involves millions of undocumented immigrants who are driven to the land of opportunity by sheer deprivation in their respective homelands. In my observation of three plus decades, very few ever go back. As one of our friends used to say, there is a magnet here in the US that literally holds you, binds you and grips you, no matter what. Some of these immigrants do get exploited in the system and yet, most of them end up making a better life than what they leave behind. One often wonders why and how the sole superpower of the world has such a porous border. The idea is to introduce some form of path to legalisation of these undocumented workers and their families, so eventually they become citizens of this land and live in dignity. Let us wait and see if this president is able to deliver on this campaign promise of his as well. If he is successful he will be the second president after President Reagan to tackle another extremely important issue in this country. The president has called 2014 the “year of action”; let us hope and see that it turns out to be a real year of some meaningful action.
The other side had a congresswoman, Cathy Rogers, provide the Republican vision to the US people. The Republicans learnt their lesson from the past exercise of introducing Governor Palin, who was relatively inexperienced and not so, let us say, seasoned and well rounded. While Ms Rogers is quite mature and made a passionate plea to the people, her message was more rhetorical, lacked any specifics and was laced with the usual scare tactics of intervention by the government. What I find quite amusing is that the Republicans always make Washington DC sound like a cesspool of bureaucracy. Yet the same Republicans are part and parcel of the same government and partly responsible for its much criticised inefficiencies. Yet their pitch to the public mostly revolves around the concept as if they are just spectators or mere bystanders. That is just part of the political game that the Grand Old Party (GOP) plays. Yes, one of the most developed countries in the world has a lot of people who buy into this great lip service of getting the government out of people’s business. Well, in that case, I often wonder what these lawmakers are doing in government in the first place, which is in essence managing the lives of the people of the country.
Contrary to popular opinion in the country of my birth, the US is a country of mostly simple people. I have met many natural-born US citizens who have never stepped out of their respective states. If you were to go to the mid-west or south, you would find a lot of people who are still living in the 1980s or 1990s when it comes to technology. These are folk who belong in mostly ‘red’ or Republican states and are considered very conservative.
There is a lot of poverty in this country as well. This may come as a shock to many as most Pakistanis think of the US as a country of milk and honey. In reality, you see a lot of people struggling endlessly to make ends meet. There are people begging on the streets too. The amount of effort it takes to make a living in this country often comes as a rude shock to many South Asians who see quite a misleading portrayal of American life through the lens of Hollywood. The US is perhaps the only country where most people, if lucky, get a two-week vacation. The culture of work is quite pervasive and the citizens are kept busy with the daily grind. In a way, it is good because a productive workforce is really what makes the US truly what it is: a land of dreams, opportunities, setbacks, challenges and some bitter realities. May God bless it forever and ever, so it can always keep its doors wide open to the finest talent in this world.

The writer is a Pakistani-American mortgage banker. He blogs at http://dasghar.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com.
He tweets at http://twitter.com/dasghar