Jul 16, 2010

Meta-Criticisms of Barack Obama

The mainstream message (from the Right) about those on the Left who are dissatisfied with the presidency of Barack Obama is that they bought into - to quote Sarah Palin - "the hopey-changey" stuff too wholeheartedly, that they are mere idealists who did not see this communist/fascist/socialist/atheist/muslim era coming and have been blindsided. It's obviously a simple way of sniping at the Left, and it is effective. It makes them seem childish and unversed in actual political issues, which I haven't found to be the case with many critics of Obama.

The dissatisfaction has been with the President's policies, for the most part. The Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys of the world convey the message as if Democrats din't understand what a Barack Obama presidency would entail, that the full knowledge of a "liberal" presidency might have scared them in the first place.

This is where the message has been thoroughly distorted. The problem that surfaces has to do with unfulfilled promises and ineffectual leadership, as Digby best articulates in an article released today:

Therefore, his [Obama's] political advisers should know that when the country is still reeling from unemployment and foreclosures after nearly two years, the passage of an inadequate stimulus bill, which unrealistic benchmarks and a giddy victory party ensured would be the only chance they got, the only people who will consider that a "success" would be beltway insiders. They should have realized that a health care bill that nobody in their right minds would have designed from scratch, the worst aspects of which liberals will be asked to defend for years to come, would be met with dampened enthusiasm by those who watched the process devolve from a sense of progressive purpose to an exhausting farce. They are expected to be able to predict that financial reform without accountability for what's gone before, combined with the administration's unwillingness to confront the civil liberties abuse of the last administration -- indeed expanding on them in some cases -- would show a lack of fundamental concern for justice among those who care about such things.


An extensive quote - sorry - but one necessary to articulate the fundamental flaw in how the country has been run for the last year-and-a-half. Obama has ostensibly carried on many of the policies of his predecessor and has been at least as secretive about, well, everything, so that some backlash should be expected. What the President (and many of his advisors) do not seem to grasp is that the same rules of governance do not apply. Plenty of people argue that George W. Bush enacted several dozen anti-conservative policies while occupying the White House, but he encountered very little resistance from those on his side, because the Right tends to contain cheerleaders and people concerned with a unified vision. Even if he didn't really follow Reagan's modern conservatism, he still had an (R) next to his name, so that was enough.

The same sort of people do not occupy the Democratic Party, and that is perhaps where Obama's most embarrassing shortcoming lies. He expected the entirety of the Obama-voting-populace to support the presidency no matter what. In a country as divided as ours, he expected some measure of loyalty, despite some potentially disappointing decisions. Let me take this opportunity to state that John McCain would have been no better. At this point, he's just a pair of fucking political clown shoes, but I digress. But this is not a time for blind faith in the government. Barack Obama is not a mirror image of President Bush, and maybe that's why he's having so many problems. What the Right refuses to accept and the Left refuses to forgive is that Barack Obama is not a liberal version of Ronald Reagan. He may be viewed as such in twenty or thirty years, but he has given the public no credible evidence that he has transformed politics in any measurable way.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:20 AM

    OBAMA AVOIDS BIBLE VERSES

    Here are some Bible verses that Pres. Obama avoids:
    Proverbs 19:10 (NIV): "It is not fitting for a fool to live in luxury - how much worse for a slave to rule over princes!"
    Also Proverbs 30:22 (NIV) which says that the earth cannot bear up under "a servant who becomes king."
    And Ecclesiastes 5:2-3 (KJV) advises: "let thy words be few...a fool's voice is known by multitude of words."
    Although Obama is not descended from slaves, he may feel that he's destined to become a black-slavery avenger.
    Or maybe an enslaver of all free citizens!
    For the brain-dead, pro-murder politicians in Washington DeCeased who fix Social Security by voting to abort millions who otherwise could be paying into SS (!), I have two pro-life slogans I thought up:
    "Unborn babies should have the right to keep and bear arms - and legs and ears and eyes etc.!" and "Unborn babies should have the same right to be born alive that abortionists had!"
    For more insights, Google "Obama Supports Public Depravity" and "Mayor 'Napoleon' Bloomberg."

    ReplyDelete
  2. way to stay anonymous with that comment coward.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Good call, Bryan. Thia was an insightful and well written blog post that had the potential to start a dialog...now anonymous has hijacked it with this moronic crap.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Trollin' trollin' trollin'...

    ReplyDelete
  5. really, anon? totally out of context bible quotes and using words like "Washington DeCeased"? that just makes you sound retarded and uninformed. go listen to some more glenn beck, and regurgitate it on some other blog.

    as to the article. i think obama seems ineffectual bc he tried to reach across the aisle. after a while, he got too much resistance, then had to resort back to partisan politics to get ANYTHING done. bush never had this problem. even clinton really didn't get much done till the republicans took over, then he had to work both sides.

    ReplyDelete