What should have been a triumphant week for the president has been tarnished by the stupid firing of USDA employee Shirley Sherrod and all the controversy surrounding it. So, here’s a partial list of things Obama has done so far this week. Click on the links to learn more.
- Issued an Executive Order on the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes.
Signed the The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, creating the strongest consumer protections in our country’s history.
Signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (pdf) as a part of his Accountable Government Initiative, saving us tens of billions of dollars in erroneous payments.
Ushered the Tribal Law and Order Act through Congress.
Finally got the Senate to extend unemployment insurance.
Nominated marshals and judges and ambassadors (all career Senior Foreign Service members, by the way).
Expanded the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Federal Operations.
In conjunction with this announcement today, Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor, Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration, and Ronald Sims, Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development convened a Clean Energy Economy Forum on Federal leadership in High Performance Sustainable Building.
Saw the Senate Judiciary Committee approve Elena Kagan’s nomination and send it the floor.
And hosted UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Look around the progressive blogosphere (including here) and see what people are talking about. They aren’t talking about Obama reducing greenhouse emissions from federal employee travel and commuting 13% by 2020. They’re not talking about him implementing the recommendations of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force. They’re not talking about saving us billions in wasted government payouts. They’re not talking about new money and resources to help Tribal law enforcement. They’re barely talking about the historic Wall Street Reforms.
You want to know why people are frustrated and unmotivated? It isn’t just compromise and obstruction. It’s that we don’t pay attention to what is getting accomplished and focus way too much on the negative. How many of you knew about all the stuff on that list? Where else would you have learned about it?
The reform isn’t reform-y enough; the marshals and judges and ambassadors should have been nominated 10 years ago, and really, Boo, who gives a crumpet about David Cameron???
You are most certainly right. One could surmise from much of the tone in the liberal blogosphere that for a lot of liberals their emotional high water mark seems to have been somewhere in the middle of the Bush Administration. At a time when they could scream incessantly (but rightly) about what was going on in the country. It’s almost like a lot of them are pining for those good old days. With all of the effort many are putting at every opportunity to throw sand in the face of the administration and their accomplishments, they might well get their wish in November. It seems like we are finding out that of lot of liberals seem to be masochists who feel alive and politically excited only when they are feeling pain.
You put this well, and I often think in these terms too. Put another way, a friend of mine once said that the worst moral indulgence of conservatives is self-righteousness, and of liberals is self-victimization.
I’ve always thought it was because conservatives were authoritarians who enjoy lining up behind authority and kissing its ass while liberals were contrarians who enjoy getting in front of authority and kicking it in the junk.
Maybe. The trouble is that these days we have very fixed notions of what “liberal” and “conservative” mean, in context of how those terms have been defined over the past half-decade or so of American politics. It’s a matter of temperament to some extent, but it’s also a matter of the goals of “liberalism” or “conservatism” at a given place or time. By no means am I anything close to an expert in political philosophy, but I’m pretty sure that just as there are plenty of times in history that I would have sided with “liberals,” I’d side with “conservatives” plenty of other times too.
For example, had I been alive in 1789 I might have shared some of the (very) broad goals of the French Revolution. But I would have been completely against its thuggish methods and leadership, and probably would have opposed the Revolution as a whole for those reasons – hence “conservative.” As another example, I would have been strongly opposed to the British Enclosure Laws of the early 19th century, even though they enormously increased British food production during that era, enabled the Industrial Revolution, may have prevented widespread European famine, and were probably inevitable anyway. But I would have hated their effect on poor farmers (who basically lost the ability to farm for themselves and either became totally dependent on rich landowners, or quit and went to work in the gruesome British cities of the era). Again, “conservative” – standing athwart the gates of history yelling “Stop” and all that.
Generally speaking. blog punditry was really birthed during the nascent days of the Bush administration. Yes, it was around before that, but in kind of an amorphous form. The adrenaline that fed the organization and the growth of liberal blogdom was almost wholly a result of the need for a substantive opposition to the Bush regime. The blogosphere gamely rose to the occasion. And without it, who knows how much more calamitous those years might have been.
But now, without that common evil to organize and fight against we have, in large part, turn the guns on ourselves. I’m just afraid that we haven’t learned how to really fight from a position of strength or how to muster what is necessary to maintain this victory that has been achieved by the election of Barack Obama. I think we will look back with much regret on how we have conducted ourselves when we wake up one day to a Speaker Boehner or a President Palin. It is quite depressing to contemplate that, in many ways, since we lack that enemy to fight, we have made the enemy each other.
Historically, traditionally, what is happening right now with Obama and his lib base is not much different from how it treated Johnson, after he suddenly sent the US into war in VN (though the anger and discontent hasn’t quite reached the very high Johnsonian levels), how it treated the disappointing and inept Carter, and how it carped, not always without reason, about some Republican-Lite things Clinton did.
Dems tend to expect their newly-elected president to live up to expectations, and generally govern as advertised. When he doesn’t, they tend to speak up and try to influence more positive results.
When Repubs elect someone, they tend generally to fall in line and hold their fire. Makes sense — they are the authoritarian party, the Daddy party, the party of the 11th Commandment which doesn’t encourage dissent.
Yes, it is depressing. But my advice is always not to despair (there is of course a difference between depression and despair). The masochistic progressives are not the only ones out there (you and I are exchanging comments, after all). We have a lot of good people in the government, and even though this looks to be a bad November, there’s no telling how the worm will turn next. We might get a Speaker Boehner, but against a Democratic Senate and President he will accomplish nothing and the Republicans will continue to reveal themselves as fools. As for Palin, well, all I can say is “bring it on.” 🙂 Who knows, maybe even the bulk of the netroots will start behaving helpfully again. And if not, the rest of us will keep on truckin’.
Not quite true. If we get a Speaker Boehner next January, the last 2 years of the Obama Presidency will be nothing but the GOP pushing IMPEACHMENT! And I am not kidding. There are lots of GOP house members already talking about it. There would be hearings with subpoena power, endlessly.
It will paralyze the Presidents agenda, take all of his time and the time of his entire staff and heads of departments. NOTHING will get done.
Just look at what Bachmann is saying. And Issa. And Gohmert. And King. Those who aren’t saying it are thinking it and grinning to themselves with anticipation!
In addition, they would refuse to fund the ‘accomplishments’ that President Obama has achieved, at least until they could reverse them.
They would take us back to Bush era economics. We could very well still have a somewhat shaky economy. What would going back to those failed policies do to the economy?
Is that enough or should I go on?
I understand that many on the left feel that President Obama hasn’t done everything the way the would have liked. But it really baffles me that President Obama’s own supporters don’t know all that he has accomplished.
Many on the left are just like the media. They only focus on the negative angle. He didn’t do it fast enough. He should have done it a different way? It’s too little too late? He didn’t fight for the public option. It’s endless…..
My advice to folks on the left is pay attention and celebrate what President Obama has accomplished. Maybe if we tooted our own horns instead of joining in with the constant negativity the rest of the country might take notice. Until then, we can allow the media and the Republicans to push the negative angle to every story and obscure the impressive record of accomplishments of the Obama administration.
Just checkout whitehouse.gov, the Saturday radio address, West Wing Week. There is a beehive of activity. Amazing changes are being made above and under the radar.
I have a question for you. Out of the list that Boo put up, what exactly can you campaign on this fall? The FinReg stuff? Is Obama going to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head up the Consumer Protection Agency? Or a Goldman Sachs shill(Barr)?
What makes him a Goldman Sachs shill?
Apparently we Dems are supposed to stand up and cheer because Obama met with the British PM, and we’re supposed to call Mom because Obama signed an exec order whereby fed employees must cut back a whopping 1.3% per year over the next decade in their work travel CO2 emissions.
He also named some new ambassadors. Pretty exciting stuff all that. Really gets the party base worked up into a lather.
Honestly — how many of the posters here gave a hoot when Clinton, another president under fire from all quarters, met in the WH with PM John Major? Did you stop and credit him for that? Of course not. And rightly so — these meetings and naming ambassadors and small-ball exec orders are the regular routine stuff we’d expect of any reasonably competent and sober president.
Now, the Sup Ct nominees so far — Kagan and Sotomayor — high marks there.
You can focus on the least consequential event if you want. I think you should be pleased that Tribes are getting money and resources to assist them in law enforcement, that Obama continues to green-up the federal government, that he appoints career diplomats (and not cronies) to serve as diplomats, that he’s slowly filling up the federal judiciary with left-wing judges, that he’s created a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, that he’s protecting people from small-print rip-offs, that he’s making sure we don’t pay fraudulent claims to corrupt contractors, that people will get unemployment checks, and that he’s developed a coherent and coordinated plan to effectively utilize our coastal beaches, ports, and waters, and that he’s passed a decent bill to improve how our financial sector behaves and is regulated.
And he did that all in the last five days.
Yes, my view is that a Dem prez should be doing some of those narrowly-focused exec orders as a matter of routine, and that those are the bare minimum we should expect of a fully-functioning, mentally sound president who isn’t spending all his working hours wandering the halls and muttering to the presidential portraits. If some want to strike up the band and drink a toast every time a new ambassador to Chad or Iceland is named, more power to you.
But I do note the Kagans and Sotomayors. So far, by my guesstimate, he’s possibly slightly ahead of Clinton and JFK on quality SupCt picks. Credit there. But forgive me for not popping open the champagne just because Kagan passed through Jud’ry, important as that was. When the final hurdle is behind us and the last vote is official, that’s the time to celebrate.
Oh, and I’ll credit O and the Congress for sticking with getting that unemployment extension.
But on some of the rest, like climate/energy related, we’re already 28 pts behind and well into the 2d half. Just making a three-yard running gain in your own territory, with the fed employee CO2 cutback of 13% over a decade, is, while technically progress, probably considerably less bold of a play than our side desperately needs at this point given the deficit on the scoreboard and that clock which is still ticking. But go ahead and cheer your heart out if you want to because, yes, the ball did go forward a tad.
This doesn’t exactly apply just to the last 5 days but another ongoing project that came to light this week is the Ag Dept working hard to settle 10s of thousands (per Vilsack) of discrimination claims that the Bush administration and maybe the Clinton administration ignored.
Did anyone know that USDA was working on this?
No, it’s pretty much the obstruction for me.
Harry Reid just gave up on climate change legislation.
And it’s not Obama who’s fucking up. he has to actually get legislation from Congress before he can act on it.
Awesome, just great. My number one priority squandered by idiotic politicians ignoring scientific fact. And this time, as opposed to evolution and age of the Earth deniers, the stakes are infinitely higher.
sigh I supported Obama over Hillary mainly over this reason: Hillary would set her number one goal on health care, Obama would put it on climate change. Looks like I was wrong, not that it would have mattered.
Frick!
The one thing that could wreck the effort to respond to climate change would be to gut EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
In this Congress, no legislation on climate change might be better than trading that authority for a quasi-market mechanism like cap-and-trade or a watered down carbon tax.
I’d rather not see Democrats give away the store just to chalk up a check mark on the “bills passed” list.
Sorry to divert attention from Ms. Sherrod’s media tour, but Democrats just killed the climate bill.
NMP, just a minor correction: Because all 41 Senate Republicans refuse to even debate a climate change bill, Democrats are putting together a much smaller, less comprehensive energy bill that they hope to pass later this year.
Where I come from, that means that the Republicans killed the climate bill.
Yeah, Republicans did, with help from DINO’s. They probably don’t even have 50 votes for a climate bill because besides the obvious asshats(Ben Lincoln and Blance Lincoln) you have coal state Senators(Warner, Webb and both WV Senators).
Well he’s leaning toward nominating a Republican to the US Attorney post in Utah which is pissing Utahan Dems off.
Also the Climate Change bill is officially dead today. So not a good day even though we all knew it was coming for months.
This is exactly where we in the blogosphere and the MSM end up rewarding the right. Breitbart and Fox won the week in the sense that the consumer protection bill was smothered by the Sherrod mess.
The Huffington Post and its former and possibly future Republican leader Arianna, the creme de la creme of P.U.M.A. agitators, is one of the worst offenders on the web, always flogging a speculative non-scandal or imagined offense from the White House while simultaneously downplaying achievements. Even MSNBC is a major contributor, spending hours of valuable air time dissecting the latest Palin tweet or doing yet another Glen Beck story. If you spend a couple of weeks staying carefully attuned to this, it gets really depressing.
A comfortable amount of time after Obama’s second term ends, people will look back and say “there was a President who kept his eye on the prize and got things done in an exceptionally toxic environment”, the same people who are now regularly saying “Obama is no better than Bush.”
Amen on the Huffpost comment. I stopped reading them with the exception of Bob Cesca’s column. I clicked one too many times on a misleading headline that wasted my time. My wife also accused me of looking at porn once when she spotted one of their salacious headlines on the right side of the screen. I swear to gawd, she thought I was on a porn site. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not some prude but really, when I want to read news I don’t want to see Britney Spears latest flashing episode…at least not while I’m reading the news. 🙂
Thanks for focusing on the policy.
I’d like to know what the Obama game plan for climate change legislation is, however. Signing historic legislation into law won’t really matter 30 years from now if we shift the US into a hotter, drier, more random climate that is hostile to agriculture.
Well, what would you advise he do?
As I’ve been saying, the Republicans will never supply six or seven votes for comprehensive energy reform. So, we’d need to hold all our seats and add seven pro-climate new senators to do anything adequate. In the meantime, the president issued the executive order on federal employee emissions.
So, let’s see what Friedman’s next column will say.
Forget about it, Jake. It’s Progressivetown.
The president is getting grumpy and using big words like ‘unconscionable.’
Via email.
I think the Governor of West Virginia had more than anyone else to do with extending unemployment benefits.
In our country’s history? The bill is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t even reinstate all the restrictions that existed under Glass-Steagall.
What does Glass-Streagall have to do with consumer protection?
Sorry, I misread. And to think I even boldfaced the words “consumer protection”…
I recommend lists like this distributed as far and wide as you can, emailing this list to congresscritters (just in case they missed what happened this week) and bugging the DNC to get on the airwaves (and I don’t mean just cable, I mean broadcast TV, NPR and progressive radio. I am sometimes surprised by how many conservatives call into progressive radio).
I believe the DNC should be doing more to fight back on things like this week’s firing of Shirley Sharrod and the way that the media messed up the coverage. I didn’t see Tim Kaine anywhere, did you? Does he just hole up in the office all week, every week?
Write letters to the editor but don’t go back to read the comments, they will be ferocious.
Check out Democrats.org. I did that just now and discovered that they have an Accountability Project to hold the GOP accountable ( http://www.democrats.org/a/2010/06/a_new_way_to_ho.php )
http://accountabilityproject.com/page/content/ap/home/?source=HQB
It looks like the Accountability Project just launched June 29. There is not much there yet but I bet many of you could help them out!
Log on to http://barackobama.com and see what is happening. Be sure to check out what is going on in your state. They don’t make that very obvious for some reason. I get to my state by entering it like this http://colorado.barackobama.com
Get busy!