After the inauguration speech, I didn’t really feel like writing…just watching. What surprises me about the speech is that so many liberals found it surprising. I didn’t really ever think any differently about Obama’s personal politics. You don’t grow up multiracial in Hawai’i smoking the pakalolo and surfing, go to Occidental and Columbia on the Upper West Side, do Harvard Law, become a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, and hang out in Jeremiah Wright’s congregation without having some fairly predictable and progressive views on things. That’s just how it is.
All that crap the right said about Obama being a secret Muslim and a socialist was bullshit. But his progressive values are obvious. It just happens that he is smart and ambitious enough to do what it takes to win over control of the Democratic Party and the White House. The only thing that surprised me about his speech was his reference to Stonewall.
But, as I said before, until he calls for a rethinking of the War on Drugs and major prison reform, I’ll see him as an urban, sophisticated, Ivy-educated liberal who wants a progressive country but will only push so far. That’s fine by me. I’d govern the country the same way.
I wasn’t that surprised.
I mean, Jackie Robinson had to stay cool for a few years, too. He was even a Republican for a little while.
Well, Jesus, why wouldn’t a black man be a Republican when the whole Jim Crow south is uniformly part of the Democratic Party?
There were no good political options for blacks back then. Once Goldwater won the GOP nomination and it became clear that LBJ would play ball, then it became a little more clear that supporting the Democrats was the best bet.
But, even then, better a Republican than a segregationist.
Oh I know. I was trying and failing to be deadpan.
And yeah, those were the pre-Southern Strategy days. Robinson was no fool. He said he was an R because of self-reliance and personal responsibility, but shitty Dixiecrats were still in their prime as you said.
Anyway, it took me a bit too long to realize that “Obama” rhymes with “Robinson,” but once I did it seemed prudent to cut the President some slack, policy-wise. He’s no fool either. I’m kind of excited about this term.
“Obama rhymes with Robinson” very well put! nice.
I think that was a Mark Twain quote. Something like “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”
Booman, I’ve been reading your site for years but I created an account just to ask this question.
You’d “govern the country the same way”? Really? While I agree in the abstract, I have to wonder: what about drones? What about assassinations? What about the “death list”? What about warrantless eavesdropping? What about the refusal to prosecute Bush-era crimes or investigate Wall Street malfeasance?
Please don’t dismiss this as a knee-jerk progressive “rant.” I’m generally with you on nearly all the points you make, and I’m a fan of Obama. I think his accomplishments and his legacy are extremely impressive. I just wonder: do the issues I raise fall into your broad-stroke category of having to “only push so far”? Could Obama still have been Obama without so many crimes against the Constitution?
I find the “drone” drone tiresome not because there isn’t a real need for a robust debate about their use, but because it seems to have become almost a meaningless or misleading word.
Prior to the use of drones, we typically dropped 500lb. bombs that had a huge kill radius and that would deafen people who escaped the shrapnel. The main purpose of a drone is surveillance and to limit civilian casualties. Pretty much all the problems with the drone program have nothing to do with drones. What are the real problems?
But all of those questions would be just as valid if we were using 500lb bombs or firing missiles from ships at sea. The only thing specific to the drone is that potentially violates airspace but we have had bases for them in both Pakistan and Yemen with their governments’ permission.
As for the rest of your question, I would have been inclined to prosecute Bush and Cheney, and it would have been my top priority. That’s why I would be a bad president. Not because they didn’t need to prosecuted, but because the economy was in free-fall.
So, no, I wouldn’t have made all the same decisions as Obama. I never would have gone into Libya, for example. And I would have tried to smash the Republicans from the outset, when they were weak.
But I didn’t run for president on a promise to move past the bitter divide.
When I say that I would govern the country the same way, I mean mainly on dealing with Congress. I’m a progressive, not a radical. For example, I hate the for-profit health insurance industry and would like to limit it to a purely supplemental industry. Would I risk massive subsidies to the poor in order to insist on that?
No, no I would not.
I suppose the only negative thing about drones in this context is that they reduce the collateral fall-out that would attend a 500lb bomb drop and thus reduce the moral/political threshold towards using them – a bit like how tasers do less damage than real guns, and so the cops are much quicker to use them – and often in inappropriate circumstances where they would never have used a real gun. I also suspect they are much cheaper to build and operate than bombers dropping big bombs and so make warfare a cheaper option.
Interestingly, whilst I generally see you as Dem establishment rather than radical, I would never have seen prosecuting Bush/Cheny as having a positive political cost/benefit ratio, thought the Libya intervention was reasonably well judged, and thought Obama had no choice but to try to present himself as “post-partisan” in his first term. Differences between us seem to have narrowed for Obama’s second term agenda and approach.
My take on the Libyan intervention is more that if we had done nothing there would have been a mass murder of some kind AND political upheaval with the potential to spread. So we did something to prevent a mass murder AND there will still be political upheaval with the potential to spread however we did earn some good will as being on the side of those who would have been murdered and who wanted to be free of a dictator.
There were equal risks to doing nothing.
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A poorly defined job, especially the aftermath. Same mistake made in the analysis supporting so-called opposition forces in Syria, who turned out to be jihadists.
Hillary never understood what was happening underneath her level of communicating with policy stakeholders.
See my recent comment and Hillary Clinton’s speech at CSIS – Analysis of Events by Militants in Hostage Raid.
I’m pretty sure that if you lined up my values and the priority of my values, I’d resemble someone like Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee more than any “Establishment” Democrat.
This is also why a lot of progressives don’t understand me.
My starting point is pretty much a consideration of how a given policy is going to impact people living in our crime-riddled ghettoes. If you wanted to predict how I would feel about the public option, that’s all you needed to know. Giving everyone in the North Philly ghetto subsidies to buy health care or access to Medicaid was vastly more important to me than killing the private insurance industry.
That’s why I focus more on the actions of the CFPB’s attacks on usury and rip-off artists that prey on the poor than I do on the prosecution of banksters.
It’s why I continue to link all gun control conversations to the routine gun violence in our cities.
It’s why I focused so much on Voter ID laws meant to disenfranchise mainly blacks and Latinos in our ghettoes.
It’s why I defended Cory Booker when he refused to attack private equity firms that are a main resource for creating jobs in Newark.
It’s why I haven’t adopted a knee-jerk opposition to Race to the Top, despite obvious problems with the program.
It’s also why I had so much faith in Obama and thought it would be so important for him to become president. You can’t overstate how much it means to the black community to see America embrace a black president. It completely rewrote the narrative of blacks in America, allowing people to feel like full citizens with every right to hope for a better future for their themselves and their kids. It created about the best possible role models for a family.
And this is also why I chose to criticize the president, not for drones and civil liberties, but for prisons and the Drug War.
Living 3000 miles away I can’t presume to know much about what people living in crime-riddled ghettoes in Phily see as their political priorities, although I take your protestations of support for them to be in good faith. It seems safe to guess that jobs, crime, gun control, health care support, prison reform, voter enfranchisement, drug law reform and education and public services improvements would be high on their agendas.
But I would also take these issues to be progressively moving from the fringes of the Dem party to centre stage within the Dem establishment, and particularly of the Obama administration. This is a GOOD thing.
Obama has, perhaps, been given insufficient credit for reducing crime rates in the US not because of any specific programs he has initiated, but by the very fact of his election giving hope to the more positive elements in the ghettoes.
Obama has always struck me as being very highly disciplined in the way he priorities his objectives, and moves from one to the next when one objective has been achieved. Better to fight a few battles and win rather than wage war on a lot of fronts and lose the lot.
He has already signaled that gun control and climate change have moved up the list, and I suspect that Prison reform and drug laws may get there near the end of his term. He has, for instance, used his powers of pardon very sparingly to date. I would be disappointed if he didn’t use it much more extensively to correct historic injustices towards the end of his term.
You have identified the bulk of concerns to our inner city citizens. In addition, there is usury in form of check cashing joints and tax rebate advances. There is a need for greater policing but also better policing that doesn’t rely on racial profiling or stop-and-frisk policies. There are a plethora of economic predators who utilize misleading contractual language (the small print) to rip people off. Everything from furniture stores to basically anything that can be bought on an installment plan, including home mortgages.
There are fights over resources for libraries and recreation centers and after school programs. There is education that can link people up with assistance and opportunities already provided for under the law.
My interest in this community stems from working in the community as an organizer. Prior to that, my interest was general, aimed mainly at righting an historical injustice. However, to know these people is to love them. And I will take a policy that helps them tomorrow over some theoretical policy that might help them somewhere far down the line.
I think a “The view form the Ghetto” diary based on the points you raise would be very valuable. Too many people assume that their point of view is the only objective or important one – whereas people who view the Obama administration from (say) climate change, foreign policy, macro-economic, big business, small business, public service or working class concerns will come to very different conclusions.
In general, while I think your blog is great and my first point of reference for all things US politics, I think it would benefit from more “guest diarists” providing insights from different backgrounds, specialisms, and current reference points. The “Booman brand” has a lot to offer and needs to expand it’s readership!
I’m pretty sure that if you lined up my values and the priority of my values, I’d resemble someone like Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee more than any “Establishment” Democrat.
This is also why a lot of progressives don’t understand me.
A lot of progressives confuse ideology with a sympathy for futile gestures.
What do I say? Framing is for suckers. Rhetoric is just words.
Organize.
The significant thing about drone technology in the context of a “war on terror” is that there is an assumption that the time for deliberation is short. This is not the first technology about which to make that assumption. That is the assumption for the use of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons.
But what that assumption does is empower the President in a way not anticipated by the Constitution in its handling of war powers. Because of the need for quick action, the President unilaterally decides to commit the US to war now with a 90-day limit (only because Congress clawed back some of its power).
With the assumptions around drone technology, the President has the power to order the killing of another human being without formal deliberation or review. And John Brennan is asserting a policy of “just trust us”. That converts a government of law to a government of men. And that troubles lots of people.
The other issue is the fact that the US developed a technology that undid one of the US comparative military advantages–copying US technology required major financial investment. The use of geo-positioned remote pilotless aircraft armed with air-to-surface missiles is destabilizing. The technology is affordable to most nations, the larger corporations, and not a few insurgent groups.
And yet the administration acts as if this is just another weapon. It isn’t. It changes the threats that we will be facing in the future. And with dropping costs could make some NRA members want one.
It is time to stop pursuing a chest-beating approach to foreign affairs and start giving all of the potential drone users reasons not to use them. That is called politics.
The “no perpetual war” statement yesterday was welcome. It’s time to end formally the “global war on terror” even if counter-terror activities continue. It’s time to restore civil liberties taken away by the PATRIOT Act and the FISA Amendments Act.
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The Law That Applies to Autonomous Weapon Systems
government of law to a government of men
Actually converting the US Constitution from a piece of paper into an active government does that.
The three branches of government is staffed by humans, no other option.
Yes this is obvious, but many many times it isn’t acknowledged.
In the activity of government some human at some level must make a decision, many many times in the executive branch it isn’t the president, but somebody acting on his behalf.
Will always be so.
The significant thing about drone technology in the context of a “war on terror” is that there is an assumption that the time for deliberation is short.
This is backwards. One of the advantages of drone technology is that you can maintain surveillance of the area for a much longer time than previously, giving you more time to decide whether or not to fire.
the President has the power to order the killing of another human being without formal deliberation or review.
The President has always had the power to do this, and has always used it. We can talk about the shoot-down of Admiral Yamamoto by the P-38s, but we really don’t need to. Every strike, battle, and campaign ever approved by FDR was a use of “the power to order the killing of another human being without formal deliberation or review,” where the bolded word means “outside the executive branch.”
The other issue is the fact that the US developed a technology that undid one of the US comparative military advantages–copying US technology required major financial investment.
The drones themselves don’t represent very much of a technological advancement at all. The satellite data links and video streaming technologies are basically off-the-shelf stuff, and the actual vehicles’ construction is trivial. The Soviets would have never been able to build a hydrogen bomb without an American one to copy, but UAVs would have been popping up with or without an American version to copy, for the same reasons that copying one is cheap and easy.
It’s time to end formally the “global war on terror”
Formally, there is no “global war on terror.” That is an informal phrase that people use to conflate different things that formally exist, like the war against al Qaeda, the war in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. Since we are formally ending the war in Afghanistan, and have formally ended the war in Iraq, I assumed you mean that it is time to formally end the war against al Qaeda as well.
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From my earlier comment …
I’ve never been a fan of sanctions, since the first Gulf War. At all the conferences in the run-up to the war, liberals would advocate for sanctions instead of an invasion. I finally got a chance to ask Ed Herman why causing the starvation and death of millions of civilians over time was better than dropping bombs. He agreed with my point, although the other person on the panel didn’t even understand my question and analogized sanctions to divestment in Apartheid.
I say this to explain that I believe that I’m a pragmatist and understand the importance of asking what would be the alternative to a policy that addresses a real problem.
But your answer is incomplete. If it’s correct for the military to drop bombs in the current situation, then there’s no need to refuse to acknowledge that we’re doing it. If current international agreements forbid such an action, then such a straightforward case needs to be made to the governing bodies. Or those governing bodies need to be openly flouted. Did Lincoln pretend that he didn’t suspend habeas corpus?
No, the administration’s actions says that they themselves don’t view their own decisions with the certitude that you seem to do.
Interested in what Booman (and others) think about this. But for me, as far as Bush era and wall street goes, think for a second where we’d be if this had been [first] on this admin’s agenda. There are multiple dimensions imo, and short term and long term considerations, but one side of it is re: the immediate tasks – given that the admin can’t accomplish everything at once, Obama went forward with issues that will benefit the many rather than punish the few.
also, I realize that you really deserve a broader response, so I will try to deal with that in any subsequent responses.
Just two thoughts to add to this:
1 – Anyone who spent time in the community organizing circles the young Barack Obama worked in wouldn’t be at all surprised at the way he embraces conservative values and culture while simultaneously working towards progressive political ends.
2 – Nobody gets to be president of the United States without having crossed that boundary of the moral universe into a country in which you’re prepared to order the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
There is also a more complicated side to this. One of my oldest and dearest friends is a humanitarian worker. She is always stationed in the worst place in the world to be a child. Some of the people we monitor and target with drones are really, really, really, really bad guys.
I can’t even listen to the descriptions of what they do for more than a minute before I am crying and full of rage. They do dreadful things to women, children, and the humanitarian workers who try to help.
These things are far more complicated than we portray them here in the US.
Thanks for this. I certainly hate the drones – just as I hated Clinton’s bombings and pretty much every foreign policy act of Bush 2, Bush 1, and Reagan except the talks with Gorbachev. But different perspectives are welcome.
I’m not sure that the drones help those situations at all, but recognizing that they are horrible situations regardless is important.
She came home from Pakistan saying “fu@k Doctors without borders, we need assassins without borders”.
Really, the situation is grim and keeping some of these terrorist groups occupied hiding from drones keeps them away from the people they terrorize.
I don’t know how representative I am, but I wasn’t surprised at all that he held those values … I was surprised that he articulated them.
Oh, we heard indicators of this during his 2008 campaign, but even then it was couched in terms of “reaching across the aisle”. Such as: yes we can disagree about abortion, but can’t we come together and agree on the goal of reducing unwanted pregnancies?
During his first term, starting with his appointments and continuing to his inaugural speeches, he was trying to come across as The Great Compromiser Who is Above the Fray. Certainly you can understand why – he’d been playing that role his whole life with great success, from his interactions as a minority kid to achievements as a community organizer to leading the Harvard Law Review to his accomplishments in the Illinois Senate and the US Senate to the 2008 campaign itself. Obama’s style was to gain the trust of people on all sides of an issue as an impartial abitrator who was interested only in finding a solution everyone could agree with, and damn he was good at that.
Unfortunately, he apparently had no previous experience dealing with the Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personality that has taken over the GOP. That, too is understandable. Every one of us has our own story about how we used to be able to converse rationally with conservative friends – or perhaps even use to consider ourselves conservatives and converse rationally with all other points of view. But how, over time, we slowly came to realize that we were dealing with a group of people who simply could not function on that level. Maybe it was the impeachment, or Florida, 2000, or 9/11, or Iraq, but something made us realize that the entire GOP and their media structure had been taken over by what was formerly the fringe.
In our current reality Obama’s preferred style simply cannot work. He can sit down with a few GOP members and talk about what they want then offer a proposal that meets them half way. Not only will they reject it but they’ll label the provisions they previously favored as “socialist” or “Marxist” or “Nazi” and accuse Obama of not negotiating in good faith. Worse, they’ll actually believe what they are saying.
I’m not saying anything of news to anyone here. But I am surprised that Obama, with his speech, seems to have embraced the role that he has been forced into. They are going to call us every bad name in the book and accuse us of advocating the most extreme left positions no matter what we say or do. Yet the positions we actually do advocate are highly popular when the poll mentions the position without political labels. So there is no point in taking a middle position – they’re going to accuse you of being liberal, and liberal positions are popular, so be a liberal.
Hopefully this signals that Obama gets it.
I also have seen something else that is very encouraging relative to the first term. I see OFA is being very active right now in prepping people for the next electoral fights in 2014 and 2016. It’s not just about Obama any more, it’s about the cause. Excellent.
immasmartypants.blogspot.com writes on this subject really well.
She calls it conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy. I completely agree with her about this and am frankly really tired of reading crap (yes crap!) like this “Unfortunately, he apparently had no previous experience dealing with the Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personality that has taken over the GOP. That, too is understandable. Every one of us has our own story about how we used to be able to converse rationally with conservative friends – or perhaps even use to consider ourselves conservatives and converse rationally with all other points of view. But how, over time, we slowly came to realize that we were dealing with a group of people who simply could not function on that level. Maybe it was the impeachment, or Florida, 2000, or 9/11, or Iraq, but something made us realize that the entire GOP and their media structure had been taken over by what was formerly the fringe.”
You reveal your inexperience. President Obama’s legislative success rate was on par with Johnson’s. We expanded the social safety net – by increasing Medicare benefits while bringing down costs, expanded Medicaid, didn’t touch Social Security. We regulated the health insurance industry,cut defense spending, broke the unholy alliance between the auto industry and oil companies and raised fuel efficiency standards, ended the Norquist pledge, forced the Republicans to vote to increase taxes, made massive investments in green energy, expanded access to higher education, ended subsidies to banks, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies–and much more.
I wasn’t addressing his accomplishments record (I think that gets exaggerated, but that’s a different topic). I was addressing his rhetoric.
I think your “conciliatory rhetoric as ruthless strategy” may be exactly the sort of thinking that was behind why Obama employed that strategy. Sounds very plausible in fact. I just don’t think that was a very effective strategy. And citing the legislative accomplishments, concentrated mostly in the first two years, isn’t proof that it was effective.
What surprised me – and that was the point of my post – is that in the inaugural address he switched from conciliatory to partisan. One can’t know the motivation, but I suspect he and his team have also come to realize that the conciliatory rhetoric wasn’t very effective.
“And citing the legislative accomplishments, concentrated mostly in the first two years, isn’t proof that it was effective.”
If results don’t point to effectiveness, what does?
We got defense cuts in 2011. Fuel efficiency standards were increased in 2012. Republicans just voted to raise taxes. We kept the Pell Grants in place in 2012. Um it is pretty common to get most of your first term agenda accomplished in the first two years–since often midterm elections give the opposition party control of at least one branch of Congress. I seem to recall that people were complaining about the “caving” in the first two years.
Clinton famously banged his version of health care reform on the podium (during his first two years) and he couldn’t even get it out of a single committee even though Dems controlled both houses of Congress. He screwed it up so badly that it was a hot potato and never even mentioned again for over a decade. But we do love that cathartic, talking tough nonsense.
Indeed. It seems to me a fair portion of leftists value outrage, empty sloganeering and posturing over results.
Which sort of makes sense insofar as to them, any results aren’t good enough. But it doesn’t make for much progress, either.
Are you saying that the kind of people who still defend Ralph Nader’s 2000 campaign aren’t driven mainly by results?
The hell you say!
Not only are they not driven by results but the results we got were terrible.
Pretty sure Gore would have appointed better Supreme Court Justices. There are lots of other results that would have been far different.
Yes, GreenCaboose is falling into the trap of thinking Obama didn’t know what he was up against. He’s a Black man in America – how can you even think that for a second? and he got elected president? the same comment to the nth power. Green Caboose is the naive, though well meaning, one. I was going to refer Green Caboose to the keirdubois comment above, Obama rhymes with Robinson. But yes, what you and Momsense write, the only conclusion GreenCaboose’s thinking arrives at is that Obama’s results are an accident. He blundered into some results. Evidence argues against that.
Look, it wasn’t just Obama who underestimated what he was up against, it was his whole team, and most observers. And, in the early months there was good reason to believe that the consilatory approach might work, despite some of the rhetoric coming out from the GOP.
First, remember that in the Clinton era, despite all the shit from the 7-year Starr chamber inquisition and the impeachment the GOP did negotiate on quite a few things with Clinton. Second, Obama and his fellow Democratic Senators had been able to cooperate in the previous 4 years with GOP Senators on some areas of common interest.
But what happened in the first months of 2009? Judd backed out from his cabinet nomination under pressure from his party. Specter was so slammed for his vote on the stimulus that he had to switch parties in a vain attempt to stay in office. Snowe and Collins were also slammed – so much that although they were initially totally on-board with the approach they ultimately bailed and blamed Obama for non-cooperation and the health bill for being too far left.
The concilatory rhetoric didn’t work with the GOP. It might have worked in the 1990s, and would definitely have worked before that, but the GOP is past that now.
But just as importantly, it didn’t work with the middle-of-the-road voters. At least not with enough of them. While Obama was talking compromise and offering to even do stuff the GOP wanted – like cut medicare and social security – the GOP was painting his proposals as far left and using his words to accuse him of threatening those Democratic programs. The end result? The GOP successfully galvanized their base, confused the middle of the road voter, and as an extra benefit watched a large share of the Obama base get demotivated. (Remember the black lady who told Obama, at the town hall shortly before the 2010 election, that it was getting harder for her to defend him to her friends?)
I’m not saying that a change in rhetoric would have changed the legislation – I think the votes were baked in regardless. But a change in rhetoric, if done as part of a general media strategy, might have helped electorally – both with the Scott Brown special election and the general elections.
Can’t prove it – we can’t go back in time and re-test it. But it seems like Obama’s team might have come to a simlar conclusion.
One problem with this theory is the Obama didn’t start using across-the-aisle rhetoric about, for instance, entitlements and austerity until after the 2010 elections. In fact, he spent that election drawing sharp contrasts between himself and the Republicans on economic issues.
When he did start using the “bending over backwards to get a grand bargain” rhetoric, starting in 2011, the middle-of-the-road voters turned sharply against the Republicans. That’s what put them down into the teens in approval.
Fair point, especially about entitlements. I think on austerity we can find statements dating back to early 2010 addressing the deficit and rejecting any additional stimulus, but he didn’t get fully on board with austerity thinking until later.
But, nevertheless, throughout his first two years he was constantly reaching across the aisle and all he got for it was the GOP and at least half of Washington punditry claiming he was too partisan.
What put the GOP in the approval rating dumpster in 2011 is that they started doing what they said they were going to do … I guess the middle-of-the-road voters who showed up in 2010 and voted GOP didn’t actually listen to their rhetoric, they were just voting against the incumbents.
Wonder if it would have been different if the Democrats had tried running against the “Do Nothing”, filibustering GOP and pointing to them as the cause of the problem? Wonder if, perhaps, instead of claiming the stimulus was just fine they argued that they needed more and screamed about a jobs crisis (instead of a results-free Presidential bipartisan jobs summit) and the GOP blocking solutions if perhaps they might have held on to the House in 2010?
We’ll never know of course. But it’s hard to imagine the electoral results would have been any worse if they’d tried.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123457407865686565.html
“Obama to Shift Focus to Budget Deficit”
February 14th, 2009.
seabe – you caught me. I was lazy. I’m sure if I had just scanned Krugman blogs from 2009 I’d have found evidence of Obama giving rhetorical support to the Austerians long before the unemployment rate started surging.
Obama gave rhetorical support to closing the budget deficit and to the problem of debt during the 2008 campaign. It was a constant riff in almost every single event or town hall meeting.
And let’s be honest, most progressives were pissed about the GWB administration squandering the Clinton surplus for tax cuts, two off budget wars, a prescription “benefit” handout to the pharmaceuticals, and the fleecing of college students by banks subsidized by our tax dollars.
Most progressives were deficit hawks during the GWB administration! Again, I think that if you believe that Government can and should play a role especially in providing a safety net than you also must be committed to making sure that Government is efficient and effective.
And many admitted they were wrong to be deficit hawks back then. Mostly, though, I’d say they were pissed at having cleaned up the Republican mess only to have them do it all over again. That’s the point of contention. Either way, had I been older, I wouldn’t have been mad at them squandering the surplus, I’d have been mad at Clinton for creating one in the first place.
you’re missing my point [and that of the others replying here]. Obama didn’t underestimate the opposition. He cannot be in the situation he’s in and have underestimated it. He knew what it would be and he played it. That he underestimated it has probability zero.
Perhaps. Perhaps this disagreement is just about semantics. The reality is he tried the conciliatory approach at the outset – I think we all have to agree on that. I would argue he clung to it long after it had proven ineffective. And I am hopeful that his inauguration speech shows that he and his team have also come to the conclusion that the old approach did not work.
but to say “he clung to it” is missing the point. That’s what he presented, knowing they’d turn him down. He didn’t cling to conciliation, he pushed himself as a conciliator and pushed them to show their intransigence – and they showed it to a ridiculous degree. He had to demonstrate for, say, 52% of the population what he knew from the outset – they’d sacrifice the economy, the country, in order to make him a one term president. They said it, he knew they weren’t joking. But he played the reasonable conciliator. It didn’t matter what he knew, it had to be demonstrated to the public at large. His process, together with the Romney campaign and the Romney 47% video did. I highly recommend you watch the Bipartisan meeting on Health Care Reform from Feb 25, 2010
here’s part 1 of it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofWahDMEMJs
it’s all on whitehouse.gov Watch how he speaks to Eric Cantor, for example. It’s quite amazing [I’m watching it now since I linked it for you]
They still use the conciliatory approach–Chained CPI during the fiscal cliff negotiations. Pelosi admitted that they had no intention of doing it.
Still, it worked! Did you hear the President on MTP saying I even suggested things that had Democrats angry with me.
but note: he has tremendous strengths in his favor, one of which is he appears to be a person without malice, and maybe that’s where ppl get the idea he is naive. and he gets along with people. The clip of him and Michelle and Boehner at the lunch is very telling in that regard.
I didn’t hear it as partisan at all. He was talking about inclusion. He was talking about civil rights–and Republicans have a history of leadership that they could take up again. He was talking about what people need in order to take the risks, be the entrepreneurs, lead in science, education, technology, etc.
Unfortunately, he apparently had no previous experience dealing with the Right Wing Authoritarian (RWA) personality that has taken over the GOP.
I have trouble believing this of someone who used to campaign in rural southern Illinois, and who had enough political smarts to get elected Senator and President.
I don’t think the problem was Obama not “getting” such people. I think he tried, early on, to give the non-RWAs in the Republican Party a hand, in the hopes that they could reassert their influence within the party.
It didn’t work, and he’s given up on it.
We don’t agree on much but I think your analysis is probably the most plausible, and consistent with a comment I made above. Obama had every reason to believe the sensible Republicans would work with him because until he won the Presidency, they had. And the indication is that they started to early on but were yanked back by their party, or in Specter’s case, effectively pushed out of the party.
Looking back on my post and the replies I think we got a bit off track. I wasn’t intending to address Obama’s accomplishments (that’s a good discussion) or his personal experiences – though I admit my wording sure didn’t help there.
I was simply trying to address the original question – “Why So Surprised?” Now that we’ve had some discussions my answer is simpler: Because he hasn’t talked like this for a very long time. Can’t be sure exactly when this stopped – I think we can find speeches in 2007 that fit this model. But at some point in his 2008 campaign his speeches focused on the “let’s find what we can agree upon” model.
So I was surprised that after all these years he gave a speech which, while rational and easily defended point-by-point, was nevertheless focused on pushing progressive policies and ideals.
Perhaps I got side-tracked by commenting that, IMHO, the choice to “reach across the aisle”, rhetorically, was not successful. But I do think that is true – he didn’t convert any GOP legislators. It’s not clear, based on 2010 election results and 2012 exit polls (which I readily concede are weak evidence) that significant centrist voters were swayed by the conciliatory rhetoric, though I’m sure a lot of centrists were swayed in 2008.
But most importantly, and apparently lost in the discussion, I wanted to point out that the change in rhetorical style is likely a great development. It’s probably time for one party to lay out that there isn’t a centrist choice – the GOP has killed that option – and that instead you have to make a choice between two different visions of the world. We know our policies poll far more popularly when evaluated outside of the political context. A true policy contrast favors the Democrats.
I see what you’re saying here. I think it would have been good to convince a moderate republican or so (Snowe, for example) as has been said, but that was not the primary purpose of pushing himself as a conciliator (if it was, then he failed, I see what you’re saying). The strategy did many things (and it’s complex). Another way to put it was he had to vacate [or whatever the right verb would be here] the “both sides do it” narrative.
I was one of the people who lobbied Snowe face to face on health care reform. I say this because when we talked, she told me that she had been talking with the President constantly. At that time (June of 2009), SEIU, HCAN, even Anita DeParle had only spoken with her staff. People don’t know this but the President worked the phones constantly on healthcare reform. Once his public statements were detracting from support (progressives assisted Republicans in triangulating him BTW which was effing stupid) he played a crucial behind the scenes role.
We knew at the outset that we needed her on Senate Finance. Even though she was not the ranking member, she was influential on that committee often the one who brokers the deals. She did what we needed her to do. She voted for the Senate Finance mark up. The final vote on the legislation wasn’t as important as that step.
Her decision not to vote on repeal of DADT had everything to do with challenges from the right here in Maine (she later decided not to seek reelection) and not the President. She had always been a vocal supporter of repealing DADT. Collins stepped in and voted for it.
But I do agree with the necessity to vacate the “both sides do it” narrative. I also think that when you take away the stated reasons for Republican opposition you reveal more clearly that their true intentions were sabotage in the hopes of gaining the White House. He absolutely knew that Republicans would still not vote for it–but it certainly helped with the 2012 election. They employed this tactic again with the Chained CPI offer during the fiscal cliff negotiations. Pelosi confirmed this publicly after the vote.
very, very interesting to hear both the dynamics and your involvement in the process