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The System Let Obama Be President. But He Still May Not Be Able to Beat It
Even if he is pushing the US in the right direction, it is unlikely to be far or fast enough in a political culture resisting reform
At an election night party during the primaries last year I made a throwaway comment disparaging those who believed Barack Obama's mixed-race identity gave him a unique understanding of America's racial problems.
"It does," said one woman.
I explained that I was joking. She was not. "It really does," she continued. "He knows how black people think and he knows how white people think."
"If that's what it took then Tiger Woods [whose father is of African American, Chinese and Native American descent and mother is of Thai, Chinese and Dutch descent] should be president and Nelson Mandela should have stayed in the Transkei," I said.
"So why's he doing so well?" she asked. I suggested it was probably his stance on the war, the state of the economy and a desire to move on from the Clinton-Bush duopoly combined with his grassroots organising experience and use of new technology.
"There's more to it than that," she said. "It's him."
It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation about Obama. The problem isn't that people come to him with baggage. Everyone comes to everything in politics with baggage. It's that they refuse to check it in or even declare it. Any conversation about what he does rapidly morphs into one about who he is and what he might be.
In New Jersey more than a third of the conservatives literally think he might be the devil. A poll last month revealed 18% of the state's conservatives know he is the antichrist, while 17% are not sure. In Oslo, where he was last week awarded the Nobel peace prize, they think he might be Mother Teresa. A peace prize for a leader, nine months into his term, whose greatest foreign policy achievement to date is to wind down one war so he can escalate another, is bizarre to say the least.
Obama's particular biography, sudden rise and unflappable manner have certainly accentuated the contradictions between how different people understand his record. But the problem goes far wider than that. An obsession with celebrity, the cult of presidential personality and a culture of individualism (all of which long predated his election) have made understanding western politicians primarily within their political context a relative rarity.
We talk instead of "great men", who as Thomas Carlyle claimed, made history independent of the society and cultures that produced them. So tales of their moods, thought processes, psychological flaws and idiosyncratic genius become paramount. The emphasis shifts from policy to personality: their inability to trust, failure to lead or willingness to compromise become the questions of the day. The fate of the world lies not so much in their hands as in their gut and mind. Whether they take tablets or not sparks national conversation.
And so for all his individual talents, the fact that Obama is the product of a certain political moment and system, and therefore represents both its potential and its limits, is lost.
Nonetheless, the potential is not difficult to see. At home his election brought together a new coalition to transform the electoral landscape. He won the vote of 97% of black Americans, 67% of Latinos and white union members, 66% of those aged between 18 and 29 and 63% of Asian Americans. Black people voted in greater numbers by 14%, Latinos by 25% and young people aged between 18 and 29 by 25%. On his coattails came substantial Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress.
He is now turning out to be the most progressive president in 40 years. The agenda he has set out of raising taxes on the rich, reforming healthcare, withdrawing from Iraq, softening the sanctions on Cuba, and boosting the number of student grants marks a far bolder vision of what government is for than either Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter did.
Internationally, he remains incredibly popular, not least for who he is not – George Bush. A poll released last week revealing which country is most admired around the world showed America leaping from seventh to first. "What's really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States in 2009," explained Simon Anholt of the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index. This is about as good a result as the left is going to get out of an American election.
But the limits are also all too apparent. Being the most progressive American president in more than a generation is not the same as being progressive. It's all relative. He has escalated the war in Afghanistan, continued rendition and maintained many of the most noxious presidential prerogatives that Bush claimed for himself.
The fact that Democrats have sufficient majorities in both houses of Congress to pass whatever they want but are struggling to pass anything that would make a decisive and conclusive break with the past suggests the problem in Washington is not "partisan politics". It's a political system and culture so crowded with corporate lobbyists, that it is apparently incapable of fulfilling the wishes of the people even when – as with a public option in healthcare – that is what they want.
The fact he is a product of that system does not mean he is not necessarily dedicated to reforming it. But we cannot measure his dedication, only his achievements. And so far those achievements have not been great.
Meanwhile, he has precious little to show for his global popularity. Nobody wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan or take in Guantánamo Bay prisoners. By the time his climate change efforts emerge from Congress they are unlikely to impress the international community. "The problem is he's asking for roughly the same things Bush asked for and Bush didn't get them, not because he was a boorish diplomat or a cowboy," Peter Feaver, a former adviser to Bush, told the New York Times recently. "If that were the case, bringing in the sophisticated, urbane President Obama would have solved the problem. Bush didn't get them because these countries had good reasons for not giving them." That's not quite true. He is asking for less and prepared to give more. But the fact remains that he wants similar things and his concessions seem insufficient.
Put simply, he doesn't seem to have the numbers to implement change on a scale necessary to relieve the pain of people and the planet. This risks great cynicism and even the possibility of a backlash. People will say we reached out and nobody reached back; we tried to reform healthcare but nothing much changed. Predicting these disappointments, from the left, has taken no great insight. Given his own politics and the range of institutions in which he is embedded, the limits have always been clear. It is the potential for overcoming them that has been an open question.
This should neither absolve Obama of his responsibilities nor ignore his considerable abilities, but simply place meaningful criticism of him here on Earth – as opposed to in heaven or hell. The fact that he is pushing the country in the right direction does not mean he is able to push it fast or far enough.
It seems the world may need more for its future health and wellbeing than what US politics can produce right now. His best may just not be good enough.
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97 Comments so far
Show AllThere are no longer excuses for poor performance. Can we stop talking about race and be honest? Obama has the numbers but the Democrats suddenly refuse to be the people's party it seems. This is totally preposterous. If the Democrats had a spine, the Sooner wouldn't be stuck with people like Coburn and Inhofe or wimpy Democrats such as Dan Boren. The Republicans won the Sooner at 66% in 2004 and again at 66% in 2008 on the White House race. Obama is just getting lazy. I can help my neighbors better than this president can.
Gary Younge could make a fortune selling the great hallucinogens he is taking.
The most progressive president in 40 years?
A progressive president would not have the right wing voting record Obama accrued during his US Senate tenure. A progressive president would not have appointed Geitner and Summers, or reapppointed Gates and Bernanke (just to cite the most egregious examples).
The Democratic Party has swung so far right that if Nixon was alive and wanted to run in the 2008 Democratic Party primary he would have been consigned to the liberal trash heap with Kucinich during the primaries. Nixon advocated single-payer health care (while president, not several years earlier) and started OSHA and the EPA in 1970. If Obama had been president in 1970 he would have told us that Congress didn't have the votes on the Republican side to start OSHA and the EPA.
Obama pays lip service to progressives on the front porch while wining and dining the right wing special interests that arrive at the back door under cover of darkness.
This Cat has been attending too many inside the beltway parties to take seriously. Another apologetic for the Presidency that never was.
Obama's the most Progressive president in 40 years? Wow.
If that's true he's sure keeping it a secret.
Just add it to the list of everything else he's doing in secret.
Why he's got a secret plan to end the war. Nixon Lives!
If Obama was serious about "Change" he'd of made three appointments his very first day in office.
(1) Appoint a FCC head who'd reinstate a new improved Fairness Doctrine and rip the broadcast licenses from the claws of the criminal media megaliths who provided cover to the prior administration from dozens of high crimes.
(2) Appoint an Attorney General who'd appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute every person involved in falsifying the information which led us into Iraq and the torturers that followed.
(3) Appoint a commission to study how the prior administration dismantled the Constitution and determine how we can repair and reinstate it again as the law of the land.
Obama did NONE of these. He's only selling the appearance of "change", not the real thing.
"He is now turning out to be the most progressive president in 40 years."
Please let me try some of the weed you are smoking.
A fool who vomits up a few good speeches with zero actual attempts at reform is neither a liberal or a progressive. He's a con man.
He will be remembered in history as the third term of W, nothing more.
So who was more progressive in the past 40 years????????????
The article boasts Obama is more progressive because of his agenda. First of all, an agenda doesn't mean accomplishment. Doing a few good deeds doesn't automatically qualify you as a progressive or any degree "more progressive". Even Bush withdrew troops from Iraq prior to his leaving. I would not call Bush progressive, or being "more progressive" as he left office. Obama's healthcare reform wasn't progressive from the start. He discarded the single payer public option from the start (which was progressive). What we are left with is insurance reform, not health care reform. Bill Clinton had a healthcare agenda and failed. He quit trying after the failure. Is that progressive?
To answer your question: When you ask who is "more progressive" you need to be comparing progressives with progressives, not neoconservatives with conservative Democrats. Just being a Democrat doesn't qualify you as a progressive.
Carter, but he was the only one. With that single exception, for the last 40 years we have been ruled by right wing conservatives, with the results you would expect.
Clinton and Obama may as well have been nominated by the republicans, because they both govern as conservatives.
The problem we have in America is that people are gullible enough to listen to what politicians say. Never pay attention to what US politicians say . . . watch what they do.
Sioux Rose
CALEB: Good post. I'd merely add that intellectuals ought NEVER under-estimate the power of team sports and how this mentality has slipped over into the political arena. The obvious case in point is that Obama IS clearly continuing 90% of the policies furthered by the detestable George Bush. However, now that HE is doing it (same things), too many people fail to see the actions. They only see that it's THEIR TEAM, and since Obama smiles congenially, and says soothing sounding words (the way others have used sound bytes or the art of "sloganarama") they believe that a liberator has come, a savior! Not only does he know what Blacks and Whites think, he also knows if you've been naughty or nice!Therefore there is no reason to critique his actions or policies, or so this crowd must conclude.
Eugene Ionesco was a playwright that specialized in a genre known as "Theater of the Absurd." Politics today qualifies, more ridiculous scripts could not be found if the most corrupt writers sought to pen them! It's almost a 21st century presidential rendition of the spoof, "The Producers." Something this badly designed had to have been done with malice!
Siouxrose, I think your comments on the influence of a team sports mentality in politics are accurate, but the source of the behavior you refer to goes deeper than that. You're really referring to basic primate instincts: seeking security with the pack/troupe/tribe, following alpha-male leaders, etc. We humans share these behavioral traits with other primates, and to a large extent even with other non-primate species (e.g., the pecking order in some bird species).
I find that people tend to dismiss the suggestion that much of human behavior stems directly from our ancient primate instincts. We like to think of ourselves as having risen above all that through the power of reason, as if we as a species somehow had the power to leap out of the sea of evolutionary forces that molded us, to stand apart from nature, enlightened and supreme. But in politics, big business, and other arenas where wealth and power are concentrated, the higher elements of human behavior (art, music, science, poetry, mathematics, literature, ...) are largely suppressed, and we seem to be little more than baboons equipped with the power of speech.
It's that power of speech, and the nice clothes, that allow us to fool ourselves into thinking we're better than we are.
Sioux Rose
JOHN MITCHELL: I agree with everything you said, and I find your insight complements what I suggested. As for the baboon analogy, one of the most promising things I ever read on commondreams, and this goes back some years, was an article about a resort in Africa. The premise of the piece was that baboons frequented the garbage bin to this particular resort; and since the dominant males routinely ate first, in this instance the food eaten was tainted. Researchers saw the dominant males (who ate the tainted food) die out. Instead of the more "moderate" males who'd never had the alpha status in the baboon tribe emulating their bad boy brothers, surprisingly, they formed more egalitarian social relations with the females!
I love this because just like Margaret Mead's research, which was radical in her time, proof was offered that refuted the claim to absolute biological determinism.
The Oracles that are used as tools by mystics tell us a good deal about human nature, and the human experience. They may have ancient origins, but their themes remain contemporary. The tarot's upper 22 high arcana cards describe the inevitable conflict that exists within every human being between his/her lower nature (the raw animal, self-interest aspect), and his/her spiritually-evolved or higher, Divine self. This interior dichotomy suggests where free will comes in, although social conditioning, family programming, the political system one grows up in all shape the dynamics profoundly. There are always more than one singular causative factor for anything! (In my view, events are based on a galaxy of factors, "as above, so below" style.) A proper understanding of the human estate might lead intelligent societies towards programs and incentives that bring out the BEST in all members. In America, too much of our culture simulates the RAW version of live wrestling. Mudslinging through words goes on through the labyrinth of talk shows, a lowering of the bar Jerry Springer holds much responsibility for creating. The physical violence equivalent is seen in countless films, and even TV series. The American diet is all stimulants, fake coloring, empty calories, and lots of violence (how meat is slaughtered, raised, etc.) And of course there are many more examples, but I feel I've delineated the key portions of "the grand USAN design," and how it tends to bring forth "the inner baboon" in too many; and that's before "eating the tainted fruit."
I've read about the tainted food incident you mention. I once mentioned it to a friend who responded, "So the solution to the world's problems is to poison expensive whiskey!"
I recently saw a short film made by a woman who studies baboons and humans. She showed a film she made of a small group of baboons on a hill involved in courtship behavior, with two males competing for a female's sexual favors. She followed this with a film she made with hired actors recreating the same behavior, but set in a bar, without dialogue. An attractive woman sat at one end of the bar. A dominant male approached her repeatedly, and she turned away each time. One of two men sitting a bit farther off smiled at the woman; a hint of a smile brushed across her lips before she turned away from his gaze. The dominant male glared threateningly at the other man. And so on and so on. The second man/baboon got the woman/female once they all left the hill/bar.
The filmmaker explained that people generally don't realize what's happening when they watch the baboons, but everyone understands what's going on when they watch the humans (I don't know if she's shown the films to baboons). We're very attuned to such things, far below the level of language. I mentioned the tainted food study to the filmmaker, but she seemed very dismissive of it; so dismissive, in fact, that I suspected that she had some sort of ideological bias. In any case, I thought that showing the two films side by side was very revealing.
Sioux Rose
John, I absolutely LOVE the references you shared! I'll have to think about tainting expensive whiskey! Imagine such an item being served at the next WTO or World Bank conference? And once it's discovered, the poor caterer says in his native tongue, "Was told must serve to dominant baboons. I was just following orders!"
And the woman who did the film replica of the baboons, how creative! Would she be interested in doing one on lizards? I gotta tell you, when the male rolls out that long orange neck "thing," (is there a biologist in the house? I don't know what it's called?) to woo the female, I LOVE watching. And where I live, the male cardinals have such seductive songs they make me wish I could temporarily turn myself into a bird to be so powerfully courted, with such elaborate, inspired lyrical missives, no less!
I agree. This con artist is just a figure head of the Empire.
WELL SAID!
"He knows what black people think, he knows what white people think"...
That is the stupidest thing I heard in a long time...
The Age of Stupidity
Obomba is the system, He took over 2 million from the "health care lobby" and others and is owned by them like the rest of the folk up in Washington.. The difference he is a better lier and can read a teleprompter with that famous bobble head action.. Ask the kids in Iraq and Afghanistan if the pain is any less being bombed by obomba or the Bush man..The pain is the same just the names have changed.
"The Age of Stupidity" That is being kind, My Friend. I would say that it is more the age of Greed, Immorality, and Programmed Insanity!
Not stupid - satirical - read the article again.
Corporatism and the lobby form of government are at the peak of their power, they will squeeze the consumer culture until it collapses from ecological chaos. Creation of a new and sustainable culture based on cooperation will come from Humanity - the grass roots. A sustainable future has little to do with administrators and representatives vastly outnumbered and paid off in the lobby by immortal corporations who need to grow faster and faster forever and are too busy growing to be concerned by poison air, soil or water.
The fact that Obama still has this writer and the majority of the American public, not to mention the ignoble peace prize people in obesiance, just makes my point: OBAMA IS THE CONSUMMATE CON MAN!
Obama is a professor of constitutional law, who voted for the patriot act. I rest my case.
The system "let him" be president? No, the "system" crammed him into the presidency, just like they did Bush. For crying out loud, when are we going to stop pretending Obama is anything but a corporate puppet, and an obvious one at that? All this immature wishful thinking has got to stop, if we're to make any progress.
Stop making excuses for Obama. He's not who you thought he was. And the Big Money Machine is RELYING on you looking past his flaws to his color and thinking, well, we all know what they want you to think. Don't fall for this trap!
I love what Jay Leno said about Barry, quoted in the NYT: His biggest accomplishment so far is winning the Nobel Peace Prize!
You nailed it!
it's scary to remember that Obama was well behind McCain until the market crashed. And couple that with Matt Taibbi's article "the great bubble machine" (about goldman sachs - Obama's biggest private contributer)and it becomes slightly disturbing that the market crash could have been orchestrated to put Obama over the top. If that's true (I hope not) then there will be no progressive policies except for a few bones thrown our way as the next election cycle ramps up.
This is about as good a result as the left is going to get out of an American election.
If this is true, let's all go get stoned and stay that way to our dying day. Or, if you have the wherewithal, leave the United States.
"Or, if you have the wherewithal, leave the United States."
For anyone so inclined a good resource is the Intentional Community DIrectory online.
Mordechai,
Please don't say that. I am not "hoping" as I did not vote for Obama. Instead, I am supporting Dennis Kucinich for President.
Although, if I had the opportunity, I would go to the UK in a heartbeat.
better yet - bring back barter and trade on a personal level and the black market. That's where we'll all be by the time the fascist revolution is complete.
Sioux Rose
MTDON: "How many joints do you want for that piano, again?" THAT black market may grow substantially as more and more are out of work with ample cause to feel depressed!
"better yet - bring back barter and trade on a personal level and the black market. That's where we'll all be by the time the fascist revolution is complete." - mtdon
That's how we did it in the 1770's. We became a nation of smugglers and barterers to avoid paying the crown's uncollected taxes. When they started enforcing collection that's where all hell broke loose.
Bartertown is where it is at baby. Buy nothing from big stores. Buy nothing from a barcode scanner. Boycott everything the Fortune 500 makes. Trade locally. Grow a Victory Garden.
OBARRY! OBARRY!
Your are but another fraud,
an agent provocateur,
another Harvard plant with no soul,
Another mindless tool of the Robber Baron Machine
A Black Bart brought to town in Blazing Saddle
But without his courage, but without his fire
How can you not forge your own path?
How can you ignore history's call for you?
OBARRY the house Negro, the Moses of our time,
A nation of weary patriots awaits your battle cry!
-my first dabble at poetry. Pretty bad eh?
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Actually that is an excellent poem TJ. Do more.
Lol! Good one.
This article is quite a howler. ;)
Barack Obama will be remembered as the worst Republican President of the last 50 years. He has already damaged progressives, and the Democratic Party, beyond measure.
the true manchurian candidate - for the republicans!
What has Obama done for "the people" lately? Nothing. He's smiles a lot and gives good speech. Were's my shoe shine though?
Once again, utterly amazing.
We all know the banksters and their Big Everything partners own the place. Our own Congressional leaders have told us this point f@#king blank. Again and again and again.
Yet, here's another piece that pretends BO is somehow 'dedicated' to 'reforming' stuff, as if that's what the owners of the place hired him to do.
What's the problem - is the truth simply too hard to accept? Easier to ignore the fact that our government is owned and operated by corporations for the sole purpose of perpetual profits and instead to keep hoping BO isn't the company man our own eyes see every day?
And we libs and progs accuse the R-nuts of living in some sort of delusional reality, do we...?
Sioux Rose
RICH M: If "political speak," also known as bull shit, qualified as its own language, you'd be its chief interpreter in this forum. Thank you. I found this article as ridiculous as you did. It is utterly amazing how many otherwise thoughtful persons (perhaps not thoughtful enough, given their incomes depend upon the MSM's publishing graces) seem to mistake Obama's lofty language for actual DEEDS executed. Truly, we are sharing an Orwellian nation these days; one divided among a reality base that's capable of looking around to note what's going on, and those who follow the words the way newscasters read straight from their tele-prompters. It's the psychic version of a civil war.
As i have said before and will say again, it is not the system that is the problem. It is the lack of ability of the people and the leaders and the slimy corporations ,and the military and the insurance companies etc, to act in a self regulated way that simultaneously strengthens the individual and the whole. If self regulation based on the cosmic and natural order of the planet were adhered to, then almost any system would be able to reflect some or all of the natural self regulation that the essence of life has to offer. Most on this site are the elite of lucid blogging,myself not included. However one aspect of the mechanics of description that is overlooked, is the ongoing belief that to refine the ability to describe the problems of the world does not necessarily end in the stabilized order of wholeness of awareness. Nor does the wholeness of the elite bloggers get transmitted to the novice readers. The level of clarity of the writers on this site does not need to be more refined than it already is. What is necessary is to transmit clarity itself, not only the words that represent it. As nice as it is to pat each other on the back for expressing more lucidity on similar subjects over and over, it would be far more enriching to infect the oft described dullness of systems and leaders ,with pure clarity. i'll stop before going into the "how" rant, so as not to get deleted.
I understand what you said, just not what you meant... (simpsons reference)
Not about your comments on self-regulation (i disagree slightly- to oversimplify, "natural" self-regulation works... but it leaves the weak and the poor dead. Not so appealing if you're weak or poor.)
But I would like to hear more about the "elite of lucid blogging"... 1. do I qualify? 2. please go onto your "how" rant.
mechanics of description...to refine the ability to describe problems... does not necessarily end in the stabilized order of wholeness of awareness.
Symantics are important, to me at least. Refining my descriptions help make my opinions more precise, to me. When dealing with complex issues, precise is important. If I am in another country, and asking where the bathroom is in another language, precise is not as important as say wooing the love of my life in another language.
but, to what was confusing: "it would be far more enriching to infect the oft described dullness of systems and leaders ,with pure clarity." Youre definition of clarity, at least I think you are trying to describe your definition of clarity, is totally unclear for me. But I still have a feeling that you have something (valuable to me) to say. Especially about these types of conversations, which I am partcularly interested in. Please expound :)
Mr. Younge, thank you for this well written op-ed. You've helped me put into word my own formulating perspective on President Obama.
I've noticed the "Politics of Personality" vs. the "Politics of Policy", and "Any conversation about what he does rapidly morphs into one about who he is and what he might be." well that is exactly the case in my experiance with the "Obama Conversation". It always seemed to me that people I talk with who (love Obama) have gone down the road of- "He represents that value, and I value that value, so he IS me, so if you attack or even question him, then you do the same to me, so f**k off" vs. "These are my policies and values, and he is working for me- and when he does then I support him, and when he doesn't I remind him, or look for someone else". Maybe is just the difference between those who love American Idol and those who hate it...
Then I read the comments. I know, my fault.
Are we so filled with opinions and/or rage that we write comments that read like we never read the article we are commenting on? Is it the anonymity of posting that we see it as our vitrol outlet?
I am far from an Obama-apologist. I am more of a Common Dreams Reformer (haha). Yes there is a difference between a progressive agenda and progressive accomplishments. Whether President Obama has the most progressive stated agenda... well I would have to see a spreadsheet of his stated agenda compared to the presidents' of the last 40 years, including the stated agendas and how they changed from when that president announced his campaign to when they left office. The comments here just barely make me want to research Jimmy Carter vs. Barrack Obama.
1- did he state a progressive agenda? Yes or No? Yes
2- how far was it? Millimeter or Mile? Millimeter
3- is it a good progressive agenda? Yes or No? No
4- Does he have progressive accomplishments? Yes or No? Yes
5- What is the impact of those accomplishments, 1-10? about a .5
Is it too much too ask people to say "He's technically a progressive, just not MY type of progressive". Would that reframe our elected leaders, and our personal/national civic goals? Is trying to tell blogger-types what to do basically the dumbest way one can spend lunchtime?
dustinchicago October 12th, 2009 2:46 pm said, "Is it too much too ask people to say "He's technically a progressive, just not MY type of progressive"."
That the "technically progressive" words of Obama have intentionally not been translated into actual progressive deeds and policies is the basis for the foregoing "vitriol" and "rage". The disconnect between Obama's words and results is not due to any incompetence or inability on Obama's part to effect better results, but is clearly by design.
Those expressions of vexation toward Obama are well deserved. If you were not so disingenuous, you'd have easily seen that.
As for Mr. Younge's "well written op-ed", I'd say Gary Younge should review the maxim, "By their deeds ye shall know them" before he attempts further revision of history.
Oh for heaven's sakes, it's not race that's damaging Obama. It's his lack of economic populism that's getting him into trouble. When will the progressives and liberals learn? I'm tired of all this race baiting coming from our side and so the hell is the public. In fact, the PUBLIC LAVA is getting worse even as we speak thanks to Obama going corporate elites. I go through all this trouble reading George Lakoff and yet I find much to my frustration the Democrats in Washington refusing to learn from him. Populism or else !
What Obumapologetics. He's the US President; if not him, who?
GARY YOUNGE, WRITER FOR GUARDIAN U.S.:
WOULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN?
"Put simply, he doesn't seem to have the numbers to implement change on a scale necessary to relieve the pain of people and the planet".
WHAT NUMBERS??? DEMOCRAT MAJORITY? THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR HIM BASED ON CHANGE??
"The fact that he is pushing the country in the right direction does not mean he is able to push it fast or far enough".
"PUSHING THE COUNTRY IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION." HOW???
THE GUARDIAN UK IS USUALLY PRETTY CONCISE IN THEIR REPORTING BUT I SEE YOU ARE BASED IN THE U.S.
IT WOULD BE LOVELY IF YOU COULD ELABORATE.
THANKS!!!
sea glass this is cd not fox you ARE in the wrong place!
yes most of you are indeed are right. he is a corporate con man.
this being said there is not a lot of reporting being done
on the things he has done right. like environmental issues
and the rollback of bush era regulations. i'm no apologetic
i was going to work for him until the telecom disaster and
voted for nader! the bigger problem is really
corrupt sens and reps who will block any real reform needed
to transform us from amerika to america once again. maybe
he just doesn't have the balls to fight like he promised
this is what i believe.
when he backs the bluedogs and basically threatens the progressive caucus - that's not change OR pushing the agenda to the left....I don't buy it - no way - no how - sorry.
And when did Obama say he was going to raise taxes on the rich? That was before the election? right?
Obama is doing the bidding of his biggest contributers - goldman sachs. When viewing his actions with that in mind- EVERY SINGLE THING he's done makes perfect sense. And the word isn't progressive.
Yes, Obama is a product of certain political system and certain political culture; political system dominated by corporate lobbyists/money, and political culture of personality cult and personality worship: as Younge says, Obama most definitely represents its limits as well as its potentials.
Obama’s limits have been very clear from the very beginning even before he was elected. What has not been clear is his ability/desire to transcend that limits. He implied it - we thought he implied it - in his campaign speeches that he was at least willing to try. Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that Obama has no intention or desire to transcend that limits. So we are stuck with “Bush” who has learned how to make flowery speeches full of platitude and smile nicely.