Pushing back is politics; pulling together is public service

     I feel for President Obama. And for the American people, who deserve better than they're getting from the Republicans in Congress.
     The intransigence of the GOP on the START treaty is unconscionable. The new majority in the House and the conservatives in the Senate, playing to the extremists in their base, care more about numbers on their side of the aisle than they do about  national security, or the reputation of America in the world community.
     True, there are those who would like us to withdraw from membership in the world, but it isn't going to happen. Like it or not, America is going to continue to share the planet with Russia, North Korean, Iran, and every other nation, and the world population. So we can follow the leadership of our President, or we can work to make him fail, even if it hurts us and our children and grandchildren.
     If you want to be angry about something, you should be angry about that.
     Strength comes through relevance, and the GOP and conservative allies taking out their partisan rage on the President and the Democrats are only hurting the effort to remain relevant. Irrelevance on the world stage is dangerous.
     Pushing back is adolescent gamesmanship. We should all be pulling together, working as one nation, to remain one nation in a world of nations. We need to be recognized as a nation united on essential issues. It's far more important than any one politician, or party, or faction.
     The country needs leadership, not petty political pushback.