I've held back from publicly voicing my assessment of the president, but (from my distant perspective) his executive performance has seemed so inconsistent. I have never wavered in my respect for the office, nor my personal admiration for his obviously noble spirit. Tonight, by publicly airing that nobility on behalf of immigrants (among whom, in recent American history, all of my ancestors would have been counted); by acknowledging the broken-ness of our political parties; by taking responsible executive action (and by testing those encoded limits for all the right reasons) -- for all of these reasons, he re-became the president I voted for.
(To those for whom every issue is one issue, I'll add: I remain concerned about our administration's apparent readiness to negotiate with Iran. Nuclear capacity is an obvious existential threat to Israel. I take the Israeli government at their word that we will act if necessary and the American government's public declarations that Israel is inherently empowered to act in its own interests for the security of its citizens. The necessity of adding this demonstrates the complicated dance of progressive American citizens who are Zionists. But, since I've wandered into this topic, I'll meander back by pointing out that international terrorism -- very real in Israeli and in America, and too long conflated with illegal immigration to the United States -- is not always part of a society's internal process. In other words: A progressive Israeli and a progressive American likely agree that terrorism is a bad thing and that treating hopeful citizens with dignity is a good thing.)