Fatimah Ali: It's all about jobs, jobs, jobs

THE president finally understands that creating jobs trumps everything else on his plate, and I expect him to make some fast progress fixing the broken economy. There are far too many people underwater economically, with only a few gasps of air left.

From the outset of his administration, it was obvious that getting the economy on track and putting Americans back to work should have topped President Obama's agenda. I'm still scratching my head over why he thought people without jobs would be more concerned about health insurance than working, when they're just trying to keep a roof over their heads and buy groceries.

I hate it when politicians cut off their noses and spite our faces, and on health-care reform, that's exactly what Obama appeared to be doing.

After months of ugly debate, fueled by angry Republicans who have consistently served up pots full of no's, we still don't have health-care reform. This is only Round 1, and the president is still swinging, but waiting for him to get his priorities straight has left many of us more than a little ticked. What good is health insurance if you don't have a job to help pay for everything else?

The president's fatal flaw isn't that he has poor intentions; it just seems that he's just way out of touch with regular people.

His body language - the way he sometime tilts his head back to one side, suggests that he's listening, but his upturned chin says defiance: "I hear you, but I'm still going to do what I want, regardless of what you think."

Thus, the contradiction of last summer's town-hall meetings about health care while legislation was already being drafted. The meetings should have come first, and the president should have taken advice from those Democrats who pushed for a universal plan. Instead, Obama set out to appease the pharmaceutical and insurance companies, the very agents who are resistant to change and to any real opportunity for meaningful reform in the giant health industry.

Now that the president has reframed his agenda and realizes that reducing double-digit unemployment should get top billing, how will he now be able to solicit needed support from Republicans who've been against just about anything that comes out of his mouth?

Unlike so many of his critics, I refuse to write Obama off as a failure. It's still much too soon, and I'll give him another year before I'll judge his success.

But I do see a pattern here. The president is a thoughtful, methodical distance runner and as he did during his campaign, he's gotten off to a slow start but will find a good stride once he gets his full wind.

So, while we're waiting for him to regain his footing, I appreciate the first lady's mission to place healthy food front and center in the East Wing.

Michelle Obama herself hit the ground running in the White House a year ago with clear ideas about how to help people enhance their lives.

Avoiding the trap of being directly involved with policy, she took a less-direct route on the health-care crisis. Her commitment to fight child obesity and planting the White House Victory Garden is genius because if you teach people how to engage their own well-being by developing better eating habits, health costs will automatically go down.

Encouraging people to grow their own food not only helps them gain more control over their lives, but has the potential to offer new opportunities for job growth in businesses related to that. Now we need President Obama to immediately make good on his proposed $100 billion jobs measure and to push through his call for banks to step up and help small businesses acquire loans. It's also up to the rest of us to think outside the box and create new lines of work in the fields of health and organic farming.

I just hope that during his next round, the president is more successful at getting some of those mean-spirited Republicans in check so he can move his plans for economic recovery forward.

In the meantime, Michelle Obama's call to fight obesity is a major key to helping move health reform forward because it helps to cut down on illnesses and medical expenses, and that's a winner for everyone.

Fatimah Ali is a regular contributor to the Daily News, and blogs about food at healthysoutherncomforts.com.