Most Popular This Week
- Not to Worry, Rape Victims Who Want An Abortion: We Won't Charge You With Felony Tampering With Evidence, Just Your Doctor
- The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy
- Obama Administration Compromise Would Implement No-Cost Birth Control
- As Predicted, Austerity Policies Send US Economy Downward
- It’s All About Israel
- The Non Zero-Sum Society: How the Rich Are Destroying the US Economy
- Don’t Put a Fork in It: On the Perils of Genetically Engineered Salmon
- Five Possibilities for the Next Great Progressive Push
- An Economic Alternative to Exploitative Free Market Capitalism
- As Hurricane Victims Freeze, Billionaire Mayor Gives Away $1 Billion to Wealthy Med School
Popular content
Today's Top News
Obama: The Bizarro FDR
Barack Obama is lots of things - eloquent, dissembling, conniving, intelligent and calm. But one thing he is not is weak.
This basic truth is belied by the Obama criticism you occasionally hear from liberal pundits. They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact a progressive agenda, but they gently reprimand him for failing to muster the necessary personal mettle to achieve that goal.
This story line is a logical fallacy. Most agree that today's imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant guy who understands how to wield political power.
Considering this, it is silly to insist that national political events during Obama's term represent a lack of presidential strength. And it's more than just silly - it's a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe "their" president is with them.
Obama is a Franklin Delano Roosevelt - but a bizarro FDR. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor - but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged.
On health care, for instance, Obama passed a Heritage Foundation-inspired bailout of the private health insurance industry. On foreign policy, he escalated old wars and initiated new ones. On financial issues, he fought off every serious proposal to re-regulate banks. On fiscal matters, after extending the Bush tax cuts, he has used the debt ceiling negotiations to set the stage for potentially massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
As hideous and destructive as it is, this record is anything but weak. It is, on the contrary, proof of Obama's impressive political muscle, especially because polls show he has achieved these goals despite the large majority of Americans who oppose them.
Importantly, though, Obama himself has not suffered from equally negative polling numbers. In forging such bipartisan complicity with what were once exclusively Republican objectives, Obama has achieved what he fantasized about when he famously celebrated a previous bizarro FDR. In an illustrative 2008 interview with a Nevada newspaper, Obama lauded Ronald Reagan for changing "the trajectory of America" and putting "us on a fundamentally different path."
Reagan was a truly strong executive - but the Gipper was nothing compared to our current president.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
67 Comments so far
Show AllGrab hammer, hit nail right on the head.
But, the crazy rightwing pundits and people I know keep insisting Obama's a "socialist"!
That's because the pundits are lying and the people are stupid and gullible. None of them actually has a clue of what "socialist" means.
As evidenced by the fact that they call Obama a Stalinist and a Nazi in the same sentence without realizing the problem with that.
What's the problem with that?
Both words mean "bad thing from foreign place" don't they? ;)
good one
Yes, NMLib, He's a socialist like Hitler was.
Welcome to Obama's Depression "at home".
It's not so much that Obama singly created Great Depression II, as that stage was set over the last three decades by every faux-Emperor/president: Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II before Obama, but rather that Obama, the "anti-FDR", folded like a cheap suit-case and missed the best chance ever in 2008 to expose and rally the naive American public "Against Empire" [Michael Parenti].
Obama missed leveraging the financial crisis caused by the Empire's Ponzi crash of 2007 and missed turning the public against the global corporate/financial/militarist Empire because he was always the paid slave of this Empire --- who said slavery was dead in America ---- based on the sure bet that he was chosen to be the gutless complicit pawn of the Empire.
Now, in a brief and drastically condensed time-frame, average, honest, middle/working-class Americans, in the heart and temporary headquarters of this global corporate/financial/militarist Empire which controls the US, UK, Israel, et al will have a last chance to quickly recognize, understand, confront, and excise the first, last, and only truly effective global Empire.
This opportunity is breath-taking but fleeting. The odds are certainly against a positive and progressive outcome, but the effort must be made both for the destruction that the global Empire causes"abroad", but also for the now highly visible "tyranny" that this Empire is imposing "at home".
Hannah Arendt's prescient warning based on her lifelong study of Empire, not to mention her direct painful experience with the Nazi Empire, never rand so painfully true ---- "Empire abroad entails tyranny at home."
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Liberty & democracy
over
violent
empire
New America Peoples' Party 2012 --- (our last chance "Against Empire")
The obummer occupied a place where he Could have been known as One the greatest Presidents Ever - but he would have had to fIght for the Common Man, forgo the post presidency $250,000 half hour speeches AND decreased the power of the Presidency - he chose to do none of these and decided that doing the bidding of the Oligarch's and enriching his family was more important than We The People and this Country.
So in reality Obomba is a Traitor.
Hello, David. Will from Longmont here.
You're dead on with this. There is no weakness, there , what there is is a worship of Reagan. Obama, for some reason, notices the change, but doesn't recognize the results of that change. Change for it's own sake is not the point, which is what he's missing. Obama notices the directional change, but fails to recognize that for the VAST majority of Americans, that change was a DISASTER. Being the pivot point is only a good thing if positive things come from it. When 98% of your people don't benefit from it, then it's NOT a good thing to have done. Obama misses that, for some reason. I guess it's a power thing, and me not being into power, particularly, I don't see how anyone would see that as a positive thing. I suppose that is why I'm NOT a politician.
Good article, David. Keep 'em coming, and I look forward to your return to the radio.
There is no "for some reason," he is Goldman Sachs's cabin boy, the CEO of GS is the actual leader of AmeriKKKa. Get it?
WJM,
Agreed.
And like Reagan, Obama is another "great communicator", otherwise known as the King of Useless Platitudes.
Not a liberal? He's not even a Democrat.
Actually obummer is the perfect modern day democrat.
Change we can bereave in.
Good line.
Obama has set himself up to where with one PR screwup his support will drop like a rock thrown into a lake. And I see a flock of Black Swans circling over our heads.
Also, my Koolaid-swilling friends plan to vote for Obama in 2012. Because the alternative would be, you know, scary. Sigh.
"They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact a progressive agenda, but they gently reprimand him for failing to muster the necessary personal mettle to achieve that goal."
__________________
And let me put in a bad word (again) for the conjoined twin, or projected version, of this "liberal pundit" folly, which might be expressed as, "They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact a progressive agenda, but they not-so-gently reprimand the progressive constituency for failing to create the necessary 'political space' to allow him to achieve that goal."
See my long-winded critique of this preposterous pop poli-sci analysis in the comments thread to the Mark Engler article published here yesterday (1:43pm).
Engler actually puts a twist on this battered-mate, blame the victim perspective and more or less asserts that regardless of whether a president "genuinely wants" to enact a progressive agenda, the only way one will ever GET enacted is if progressives mount an effective bottom-up movement powerful enough to back a president into a progressive corner.
The Only way to Force democrats to 'do the right thing' is to make them feel the pain when they don't 'do the right thing'.
The only way to do that is vote for a progressive 3rd party - Not once but over and over - And the dems Must lose by less than these 3rd party progressive votes receive. Plus progressives must be strong enough to say Hell Yes We Did when the dim apologists say YOU caused the dems to lose.
Obedient Servant,
Short version:
In the USA Kingdom of Shit, the Progressives need a lot of diapers to tend to the perpetual Obama Diarrhea.
Anyone that peddles a belief that the "make me do it" FDR line applies to modern politics is a fool, a liar or both.
The author says: "Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant guy who understands how to wield political power." Huh? "Understands how to wield political power?" Most do not agree with this statement, perhaps not even in this chatroom. The corporations are wielding him. What he knew was how to market himself. What he still knows is how to appear "presidential"... i.e. calm, dignified, etc. I think most of us want him to grow a pair of balls and stand up to the criminal military industrial complex, but it appears he is:
1.) a sellout
2.) gutless
3.) a fraud to begin with
4.) all of the above
The guy is breaking my heart. Again, Martin Luther King must be in tears... At any rate, he does NOT know how to wield political power. (John Boner was laughing about that very thing after the debt deal signing - he said, "We got 98% of what we wanted", a drect quote from that selfish dog.)
On Target............The author's take on Obama is truly bizzaro..........he's nothing like FDR!
Both of you people have serious reading comprehension problems, the article is saying Obama is good at being bad, that is not an endorsement,
guitarist,
Exactly right. Too many people that voted for Obama prefer to believe he is incompetent rather than a calculating, conscienseless egotist who actually ENJOYS what is happening, isn't simply an errand boy, and has agency in destroying the social safety net in the USA.
As FDR planned and coordinated good reforms, so this Bizarro FDR is plannning and coordinating the destruction of FDR's reforms.
However, I think the posters realize that this assault on our social programs is a massive effort involving many people belonging to the corporate reptile elite. This is much bigger than Obama. If Obama resigned, his successor would pursue exactly the same agenda.
The rot is very deep.
Good post.
We needed an FDR but got a Nigel Chamberlain/Herbert Hoover combo, Nigel as British PM thought he could work things out with Hitler and Herbert Hoover thought he could just let the market work it's magic.Just like our fearless leader, they were both wrong. Obama talks the talk, but he doesn't walk the walk. So who is he BS'ing, us or them.
Good post, Dave G. Although I would imagine that anyone graduating from an Ivy League University (apart from Bush the Lesser) would be intelligent, there is nothing ostensibly brilliant about Obama. For all the sell-outs, he entirely lacks character, leadership, and the faintest moral decency. Who knows, maybe Michelle is a Lady Macbeth-like power behind the throne?
History favors certain people at certain times as direct result of a number of factors coalescing. Currently, in the phase where corporations rule (I have a name for this: Carpicon) the president is basically rendered a superficially amicable CEO. He's the front man to The Corporation; and as many of us know, there are essentially only a handful (or two) of mega-corporations that pull the big strings. THAT is who Obama answers to... shamefullyl
And comparing Obama with FDR? Even now? It's disgusting. Selling out Social Security is FDR's inversion...
Hi Siouxrose,
Please see my comment below to understand what Sirota meant by Bizarro FDR. Sirota made the mistake of assuming that everybody would understand the popular cultural reference to "Bizarro World."
Right now we need a liberal/progressive Democratic candidate to challenge Obama and take back the majority party. Braun, Nader, Ventura, Kucinich, Damon, Sanders, Paul, Feingold or We the People, direct democratically, using modern technology. If corporations can be persons, We the People can too.
I think a very good ticket to expose Obama's unchallenged weaknesses from the left would be Elizabeth Warren and Bill Richardson. She would be perfect to run against him in the primaries for president even if she didn't win--just for the galvanizing influence on the debate, and thereby, the masses she could have.
With Bill Richardson as her running mate (a member of a large ethnic minority with good foreign policy credentials) she might even win. Richardson is a lukewarm Clinton Democrat, but his ethnic appeal for disaffected minorities (for whom Obysmal's done nothing) would offset Obummer's, and she could otherwise keep him on a back burner most of the time. So long as they could coach him not to say anything too stupid during the debates that would interfere with her economic ideas she might have a chance.
A lot of people seem to think that it's pointless to primary Obomberhoover from the left because a win is unlikely. But at this point such primary opposition scores a win in the battlefield of ideas even if it only shames the Obama campaign to budge leftwards and admit failures. Since the GOP pushed similarly failed, harder core versions of the same neo-lib/neo-con ideas, Obama's admissions of the failures of any of those ideas would also reflect on poor GOP policy choices (since the DLC and GOP have been in policy bed together since NAFTA).
Ross Perot didn't win office either, but he still had a very salutary effect on his Democratic and Republican opponents in terms of holding both of their feet to the fire to move towards balancing the operating budget, which better suited the fiscal situation in the mid-1990s (not now).
What we need right now is a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, competently regulated Nader-style government that runs sufficiently stimulative budget deficits that are devoted to paying just for a Green New Deal and otherwise minimize military spending and increase taxes on the super-rich. Someone like Warren would try to eliminate the offshoring of taxable income by the very wealthy to super-rich as well.
The validity of these ideas must be S-P-E-L-L-E-D out to an increasingly dumbed-down and brainwashed electorate in ways that vividly describe their benefits to individual's, the economy and the country and use clear historical examples drawn from New Deal programs. If enough of them can see that these job-creating programs are in THEIR interest, then the neo-lib/neo-con indoctrinated scale may begin to fall from their eyes even if only out of the selfish desire to have a job or a better paying job that does something useful like helping to create a more environmentally sustainable country and world.
I've just read (at Daily Caller website) that Ralph Nader said yesterday
"I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent." And that he's looking for a likely candidate.
Hope springs!
Warren would be good and I think Steven Colbert would be an exciting candidate. But why play the oligarchy's game of government by easy to bribe, coerce or assassinate representatives? Why can't We the People be the candidate? If corporations can be persons, We the People (Inc.?) can too.
Direct democracy
I, for one, cannot say whether he is brilliant or not (I've never spoken with him), what I can say is that, from where I stand, Obama is one big fuck-up.
The foot of tyranny will press down harder and harder and the death rate will rise faster and faster.
Sirota; "It is silly to insist that national political events during Obama's term represent a lack of presidential strength."
What is really silly is to suggest that Obama is another FDR -- bizarro or otherwise.
Sirota: "He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor - but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged."
It doesn't take the "strength" of FDR to do what Obama has done. Not even close.
My goodness, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats do whatever Obama says: "Sit", "speak", "beg" ...and, of course, "roll over" (their favorite trick) . And as we all know, Obama has not gotten the Republican leadership to do much of anything (though that may simply be because he has not asked).
Nor does it take anything close to the "strength" of an FDR to go along with the corporate status quo (as dictated by the Republican leadership) the way Obama has.
And the idea that it takes "strength" to oppose the will of the public -- especially his "retarded, druggy liberal base" (in the words of White House officials) -- is just a joke (one that Obama laughs at regularly, I'm sure).
As many of the folks who post here have recognized for some time (some of us since well before Obama got elected), Obama is basically doing the will of his corporate masters.
That does not make him "strong" -- politically or otherwise.
And it certainly does not make him an FDR.
The sarcasm and correct bitter criticism of Obummer in this article zoomed right over your head didn't it?
No, read what Siorota actually says (rather than what you would like to think he says)
Sirota is being quite serious when he claims: "He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor - but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged."
Sure Obama is propping up the forces of organized money, but it does not require strength to do so.
Unfortunately, the claim that Sirota makes that is new (that "Obama posses the strength of FDR") is not correct and the observation that he makes that is correct (that Obama is "propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged) is nothing new.
"...but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged."
Reading comprehension fail, all he means is that Obama is a talented servent of capital in for example gutting Social Security with little complaint, gutting the anti war movement, etc. He is saying Obama is an FDR level talent of corporate whoring. He is a better more talented whore than Bushler is all, shrug.
G: You probably realize that a lie told often enough will be taken for true by lots of people. Hey, in the US a high percentage STILL credits Sadam with 911!
So if I say to you more than once, "I don't think he's fat." You are going to hear "fat" and associate it with "he." That's why some of us find the odd parallels with FDR to be a ridiculous analogy. Sirota is pretty smart to NOT know that he's planting a strange subliminal, even if he's damning The Prez with faint praise.
We hear "Prez" and "FDR" and some form of analogy sticks in the mind.
JIMBO: Bingo! I love this line from your post (and attempted to relate something along the same lines in my comment about the forces of history that give rise to certain persons at specific intervals):
"Nor does it take anything close to the "strength" of an FDR to go along with the corporate status quo (as dictated by the Republican leadership) the way Obama has."
This is the key! It takes NO strength at all to do what the money wants, and let the people be damned, even when so many are hungry, homeless, and going without medical intervention/treatment, etc. And the wars? Added to the expansion of the covert forces as per another incisive article by Nick Turse! I mean... it's PURELY satanic to see the priorities that ARE underway, actually gutting everything identified with worth, decency, or hard-won democratic ideals and former standards!
It does take a certain evil talent to pull it off with a straight face and soothing NPR friendly voice though. That makes him MORE dangerous than Bush and especially Cheney, who they couldn't let go out in public too often as Cheney's asymmetrical grimace reeked of evil. Obomba is just as evil but better at it, even some people here still apologize for him, how mastering of the art of propaganda is that?
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LqXG_Ey4Mi8/R_-YGZVcjSI/AAAAAAAABEo/UKw4s6Tcg2o/s400/cheney+grimace.jpg
You forgot "narcissistic," "arrogant," "fundamentally dishonest," and "evil."
Sirota's being silly. Obama didn't achieve success in advancing the ends of the rich because he "understands how to wield political power." It doesn't take any "political muscle" to sell out. Obama's not a brilliant political manipulator, but a well-goomed whore.
Well groomed whores are the best political operatives of all, maybe you didn't get the memo?
Pffft. Why FDR? Obama doesn't stack up to Johnson, who at least had progressive programs at home to balance his catastrophic foreign policy.
Why compare him to a Democrat at all? Why not compare him to Nixon, or little Bush, or Pinochet?
Because Obama is taking apart FDR's social reforms. That's what bizarro means when applied to any concept; it's the evil inverse. The only place the analogy doesn't fit is with Medicare because that was put in place by LBJ.
What does it mean to say that Obama is an FDR? Is this what he calls himself, or is this what pundits call him? Obviously it's meant to mislead, just like Obama's soaring rhetoric and his so-called ideals. He is a center right money man with a romantic vision of winning the love of the people as FDR did. Why doesn't he consider himself a Ronald Reagan? Is it because when he started out in politics he had to consider himself a Democrat to be taken seriously by African Americans? He's obviously a good student -- he got the left-leaning talking points down really well! But he's a Republican on the down-low! He really needs to come out of the closet! People are least effective when they are hiding who they really are. Come on, Barack -- embrace your Republican self! Run as a Republican so that we can run someone ( anyone, really, who's lefter than you) who will KICK your ass. Because the way it is now, we have a Republican winning no matter what.
SING:Right on!
And good posts: Metal & Alan Macdonald
Boy, CD needs to get an national RADIO show/platform so that some of the THINKERS on here can be heard by the millions who are being lured to the rocks by the sirens of Hate Radio.
Count me among those don't see the point in labeling Obama as the "bizarro FDR". Comparative terms and satire have to have some kind of ground of comparison, and the ground here isn't nearly strong enough.
If Obama had come in after a few administrations that had worked to establish the strength of public institutions, he could be called an anti-FDR or a mirror image of FDR. All Obama is doing is carrying on and sealing up privitization, corporatization, and authoritarianism in accordance with the path of previous adminstrations. It's true that he is quite successful in these endeavors, but it is mainly because he a supreme phony, a man specifically branded for the role. How does this translate into "bizarro FDR"?
The FDR comparison, even as a bizarro FDR, could come from an inability of the writer to discard the notion that there *must* be something special about Obama; we were all so sure. (I wasn't, but that's beside the point.)
Personally, it looks to me like Sirota is "grappling". More power to him.
Arry.
Please see my comment below. The mistake that Sirota made was that he assumed everybody in America understands the popular cultural reference to "bizarro world"
My comment was written in complete ignorance of the "bizarro world" reference pointed out by Eric at 9:04pm.
(Also, please excuse the misspelling of privatization.)