→ Obama
Has Obama Fizzled?
| Wed Nov. 25, 2009 9:05 AM PST
I haven't read one of Richard Cohen's columns in a long time, but yesterday a regular reader alerted me to his latest buffoonery. Apparently Obama's "moral clarity" has disappeared:
As president [] he has tried so hard to be the un-George Bush that the former president's overweening moralism — his insistence on seeing things as either black or white — has become an Obama gray. Human rights in
general has been treated as if it's a Republican idea. Obama should reread his Philadelphia speech. He'll find a good man there.
Blah blah blah. Obama the famously supple and nuanced campaigner saw things in black and white? WTF? [Oops. Sorry. Cohen is talking about George W. Bush here. I misread. But the general point stands: Cohen thinks Obama has lost his "moral clarity."] But apparently this has become a trend. Here's Michelle Cottle:
As its "Arena" question to pundits this morning, Politico has "Obama's Charisma: Where Did He Leave it?"
The implication seems to be — and I feel as though I've heard a variation on this question asked not infrequently of late — that Obama was such a dazzling, inspirational, transformational campaigner that it's hard to fathom where this wonky, chilly, pathologically measured grind of a president came from.
What? Are we all suffering from short-term memory loss?....Yes, Obama has the juice to thrill the globe with his from-the-pulpit-esque speeches. (Which he still delivers when occasion calls.) But it's not as though the guy has ever been known for his overwhelming warmth or charisma in the daily ebb and flow of things. He is as he has always presented himself to us.
Liberals are mad at Obama for sending more troops to Afghanistan. The gay community thinks they've been betrayed because he hasn't instantly repealing DADT. M.J. Rosenberg is unhappy because Obama has turned out to be a "conciliator," not a fighter. Conservatives are apoplectic because the guy who billed himself as a moderate is trying to push through healthcare reform and a climate change bill.
But this is all kind of crazy. Obama said repeatedly that he planned to shift resources from Iraq to Afghanistan. He made it as clear as any candidate could that he wanted to dial down the temperature on the culture wars and avoid big social issues early in his presidency. He spent an entire primary campaign selling himself as a post-partisan reach-across-the-aisle guy in contrast to the brawling Hillary Clinton. And healthcare reform and cap-and-trade were the main pillars of his presidential campaign.
Once you get elected, real life is messy, politics intrudes, and mistakes are made. Sure. And Obama has disappointed me in a bunch of respects. But nine times out of ten, when I actually think through the ways I'm disappointed, I find that things are actually going almost exactly the way I expected them too. That disappoints me sometimes, but it's not because Obama has turned out to be a fraud or a fizzle. It's because he hasn't.
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Comments
Speaking of outrages, what's up with continuing the Bush Land Mine Treaty idiocy?
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/25/ahead_of_key_global_conference_us
Very Disappointed, but not Entirely Unexpected
Submitted by Outis (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 9:51 AM PST.
I voted for Obama with the hope that possibly someone who was not so tied to the DLC and so entrenched in the system might be able to break the trend. Instead, he has been subsumed by the system. I still think he was the best of the choices offered, but the result makes me even more convinced that the system is irreparably broken, and it cannot be fixed.
it was always going to take time
Submitted by ericf on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 9:54 AM PST.
Doesn't anyone but me remember during the Bush years when we kept saying the next president would need his whole term, at minimum, to fix Bush's messes and neglected problems? I get that opponents want to make it look like it's taking forever to fix things and it's all Obama's fault, but on the left, what's the matter with you? It's been just a year. For crying out loud, FDR needed two terms to tackle the Depression, which was economically much worse but at least he didn't have wars and environmental crises at the same time.
It hasn't even been a year! It's been 10 months. We really are a very impatient people.
The problem, though, is that not only has he not changed some things that he could have changed with executive order, but Obama's administration has actually left some stuff in place that he really shouldn't have. Those ARE disappointments. I blame Rahm Emmanuel and institutional inertia, mainly, and the Bush Administration for making those things seem "okay" (like the vast expansion of, and disturbing use of, extraordinary rendition, wireless wiretapping without a warrant, the slow, slow closing of Guantanamo, etcetcetc)
I totally agree.
Submitted by Jon (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:07 AM PST.
As far as I can tell, Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do while campaigning. Of course, the practical difficulties of implementation means that many of his initiatives are still in progress. But he has started the ball rolling on everything he promises, or has reiterated that it is his intention to do so in the near future.
People's disappointments, such as they are, seem based on a lot of wishful thinking in their interpretation of Obama's campaign promises. If you look at the actual words he used, it's hard to see much daylight between them and his current actions.
I think it's more institutional depression
Submitted by Kenneth G. Cavness (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:09 AM PST.
We have 60 senators and still can't get anything through; we have control of most of the governorships, both houses of Congress, and the Executive Branch, and we are STILL mired down and have to pass legislative hurdle after legislative hurdle to get anything done.
Obama showed his inexperience when he demanded a health care bill by the August Recess. It's now taking up ALL of our major time and is driving the national political narrative way past the date when Obama wanted it to.
I think a lot of us just feel like there's no stopping this train wreck of a current government without some sort of revolution, you know? It's way too staid, too laid back, to traditional to get anything done. It's INTENTIONALLY slow at this point; that way you have eternal issues that are always on the cusp of resolution but never quite make it there, and have ready-made issues for campaigns.
A lot of us thought that with the sea change, Obama would at the VERY LEAST roll back the worst excesses of the Bush administration. Instead, it seems like it's SNAFU. The country lurched FAR to the right after 9/11, and it's like trying to shift the currents of the ocean to bring it back. Obama's too lackadaisical to be the man to fix that. I recognize that he's trying to give back reins to the Legislative branch, and I approve of that, but it's like they don't want it. I guess the complacency of an Imperial Presidency has some pull still.
Argh. Just thinking about it makes me depressed.
"No political appointees in
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:17 AM PST.
"No political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years. And no political appointee will be able to lobby the executive branch after leaving government service during the remainder of the administration."
"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies. And so, that approach, I think is what is going to allow people to stay involved in this process."
The WP keeps Cohen on
Submitted by Chris Brown on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:22 AM PST.
the payroll while closing its three remaining USA bureaus.
Strive For The Ideal, But Deal With What's Real
Richard Cohen is complaining about a lack of moral clarity?
Submitted by GregSanders on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:28 AM PST.
He's a torture apologist. He vehemently opposes prosecution of anyone involved. To be clear, he's happy we aren't doing it any more, but it's rich to hear him even mention the idea.
Presidents are like four
Submitted by tpx on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:29 AM PST.
Presidents are like four year olds. They need a lot of unconditional love and affection, but they also need firm discipline to keep them, and us, out of trouble. Obama needs to be modestly rewarded for his feeble health care initiative and approach to global warming, but he needs to be severely punished for his coddling of the finance industry, surrender to Netanyahu, Afghan escalation and continuation of W. Bush's emasculation of constitutional liberties.
Sure Obama told everyone he was a Kerry-lite during the campaign. He knew those who opposed Republicans, McCain, W. Bush and the neo-con regime had no other legitimate candidates to support, and he knows they probably will not have any viable candidates to support in 2012. Nevertheless, those who want much more than Obama is willing to deliver or struggle for should be very disappointed with him, and they should push back and publicly display their discontent with his performance. The only way to prevent the president from being wholly co-opted by the finance, military and intelligence elites is to make his life miserable with protests. Obama may be able to count on those opposed to Palin values to vote for him, but he should also count on those voters to vociferously oppose him when he fails to satisfactorily deal with their core issues.
After the president explains his rationale for sending more troops to Afghanistan, he needs to have his mouth washed out with soap and sent to bed without any dinner. Instead, he will stay up late playing video war games, like many American children. It is up to his supporters to discipline him with tough love.
I saw a bumper sticker today
Submitted by Renegade (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 10:49 AM PST.
I saw a bumper sticker today that said "You Call This Change?"
the exceptions that overshadow the rule
Submitted by voxpoptart on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 12:33 PM PST.
In most ways, I agree that Obama is the same president he told us he would be during the general election. But there's three huge exceptions:
1) his loss of interested in detainee rights and reducing government secrecy, where his administration is moving rapidly, energetically, in the wrong direction;
2) his complete sell-out to the financial interests, without any of the corresponding regulation he argued for in the debates;
3) he told us, again and again, that if we didn't like our insurance, he'd arrange for us to buy into the same insurance that federal employees get. But he didn't even offer that as a starting position in health care reform -- the "public option" debate is over a backstop for the uninsured, not something a voter can just decide to buy -- and he's shown a ruthlessness against crusaders for this weak public option that he's never shown against Republicans or Blue Dogs.
He was a primary candidate first, and for that reason we might append a fourth large reversal. I mean, I was a Dodd supporter (I was one-fourth of all Dodd supporters...), but I don't recall Obama doing the big muscle-flexing about Afghanistan and Pakistan at the time; his emphasis, as I took it, was on his having been an opponent, from the start, of the Iraq War. If I'm right -- I'm certainly open to correction about this -- the fact that we knew in November that Obama was in favor of land wars in Asia was *not* something he'd advertised until liberals were in a position to like it or waste their vote on Nader.
Hmm. Turns out that populist
Submitted by MaynardHandley on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 5:57 PM PST.
Hmm. Turns out that populist John Edwards would (probably) have governed more the way you want... Shame he never got the chance...
(And yeah, so he screws outside his marriage, big deal. I'm interested in his political philosophy, not his sexual philosophy.)
On the other hand would Hillary have been any different? I don't recall her being especially interested in limiting the power of finance, or dialing back war and torture during her stint as a senator.
As I have stated many many times, the sins of America are the sins of AMERICANS. GWB got to power because that's what Americans wanted. Obama is doing pretty much what Americans currently want. Americans are bloodthirsty morons.
After the 2000 election
Submitted by tpx on Thu Nov. 26, 2009 8:43 AM PST.
After the 2000 election Edwards went to work for a hedge fund that owned two sub-prime mortgage companies. Edwards could have done anything after his failed VP run, and he chose to work for the finance industry despite his rhetoric of economic egalitarianism. Edwards could not have governed as his supporters would have expected because of his conflicts between accumulating wealth for himself and his associates and redistributing wealth through changing the political economy. An Edwards presidency would have been a spectacular failure because of his self-entitlement attitude, his admiration for the wealthy and his ignorance of economics. Edwards is the Democrats' Palin, and empty headed pretty face who claims to represent the common people while grasping for wealth and prestige.
I didn't vote for Edwards
Submitted by DB (not verified) on Thu Nov. 26, 2009 9:55 AM PST.
I didn't vote for Edwards because I didn't think he HAD a political philosophy. The vivid populism he espoused during his '08 campaign sounded great, but it was as deep and solid as a child's wading pool.
And, it turns out, had he been nominated he would have imploded, and he'd either have continued as dead man walking or been forced to resign the nomination and replaced in embarrassment. Either way, we'd now have President McCain.
So, unfortunately, his personal foibles are relevant.
Apparently MJ Rosenberg was
Submitted by really (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:05 PM PST.
Apparently MJ Rosenberg was too busy accusing the Clinton campaign of making nefarious robocalls to actually pay attention to what the Obama campaign was saying. Obama ran as a conciliator - change the tone in Washington- not as a fighter.
Apparently MJ Rosenberg
Submitted by blank slate (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:09 PM PST.
Apparently MJ Rosenberg spent so much time accusing the Clinton campaign of racism that he didn't actually have enough time to look at candidate Obama. Otherwise why would he be surprised that a man who ran as a conciliator (change the tone in Washington) was not a fighter?
Apparently MJ Rosenberg
Submitted by blank slate (not verified) on Wed Nov. 25, 2009 6:10 PM PST.
Apparently MJ Rosenberg spent so much time accusing the Clinton campaign of racism that he didn't actually have enough time to look at candidate Obama. Otherwise why would he be surprised that a man who ran as a conciliator (change the tone in Washington) was not a fighter?
You misread that. It's the
Submitted by CU (not verified) on Thu Nov. 26, 2009 6:23 AM PST.
You misread that. It's the former president (Bush) that saw things in black and white. I think Obama gave us plenty of warning as to what what coming with his position on the telecom billl.
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