A Letter to POTUS

Dear President Obama,
I doubt you will ever read this, but the interweb is a neat thing, so who knows.  Right off the bat, I would like to tell you that this is not a letter of complaint or criticism, it's a letter of encouragement.  I want to encourage you, not because I think you've done everything right, but because I understand what it's like to do your best and have a bunch of people totally not get it.
See, I'm a pastor, I spent ten years in Rural Western Pennsylvania serving a couple of small churches and trying to do some things to inspire change and new vision.  It didn't really work.  We liked each other well enough and some people seemed to get it, but the systems never really seemed to change much.  Now I'm just getting started with a church right outside the Beltway in Southern Maryland, and we'll see how it goes.
What I have learned in the past ten years (and I suspect you are feeling this too) is that people really don't like change.  You ran on a platform of change, it got me, I voted Democrat in the Presidential election for the first time in 2008 and actually changed my party affiliation shortly after that.  It was partly the wars, and the economic crisis, it was partly being a parent and considering what sort of world I wanted to hand to my kids, it was partly just way too much W.   The straw that broke the camel's back was all the personal attacks on you. Not because I thought you need protecting, I'm pretty sure you're a tough cookie, but because of what it said about the people I had chosen to affiliate with politically for my entire adult life.
I was a Republican from the time I was 18 because I generally believe that the government ought to do it's job and stay out of my life as much as possible.  I believed, for a good while, that the conservative camp, best represented my perspectives and interests, until they didn't anymore.  It had a lot more to do with what i hear Jesus saying that what you said, but the two things, every now and then, do connect.  What's more, a party that I once supported fairly consistently revealed themselves to be vulnerable to being hijacked by narrow-minded, paranoid bigots, and they have done nothing in the past 5 years to show me that is not the case.  Over that time, despite having some frustrations with the Democrats, I have at least been convinced that you are all at least trying, and that is really all I can ask.
I want the Affordable Care Act to succeed, I want it to work so well that it leaves no doubt in anybody's mind that it was a good thing.  I have long believed that our healthcare system is a black eye on our great nation, and it needs fixed, and the free market has proven, rather catastrophically, that it won't do the job.  I actually wish we could do more than just try and tweak the insurance situation, but I know how things work, and I know it's a tough row to hoe.  The fear that is out there is rather staggering.  People are afraid of change, even people who deeply believe change is necessary.  You should see it in churches!  Minor tweaks in "the way we've always done it" produce widespread panic and hand-wringing.  Things that seem like absolute common sense, become emotionally charged and then it becomes obscenely difficult to get anywhere.
I know you're frustrated, I can hear it, even in your well prepared speeches, and I know how that feels.  I've been there, but what I know is that the leader has to be the cool head, and the steady voice.  Don't back down, but don't go on the warpath, people will learn their way around the roadblocks.
Here's where I start sounding like a preacher; it's something my Dad (also a Presbyterian Minister) told me one time when I was wrestling with some stumbling blocks: "The Devil always overplays his hand."  Like when your political opposition decided to call you a Muslim or challenge your citizenship, or now, when they've forced a government shutdown because they're bad losers, eventually people figure out what they are.  The American people may be a lot of things, but we don't like people who hold us down.  We will figure out who they are and get rid of them eventually.
I believe in this grand experiment we call the United States, I am proud of our nation, but I know we've got a lot of growing up to do.  I'm praying for you and your family every day, and hope you can lead us through this mess somehow.  I'm not far away if you want to stop by for coffee, Good Samaritan Presbyterian Church is right over the river in Waldorf and it has a big enough lawn to land your helicopter.
Yours Truly,
Mark Gaskill