I greatly enjoyed a three page article on the subject of President Obama and his inability toget anything done, a subject that has caused me endless frustration. Someone called David Michael Green, a professor at Hofstra University, New York has published a superb discussion of the failures of the excessively polite President. The entire article can be found at OpenEdNews.com, at this link:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Just-Gimme-Some-Truth-by-David-Michael-Gree-100206-128.html
Here is an excerpt that tickled my funny bone. Having read it I feel less alone:
Much as I hesitate to say it, the changes in the Obama White House this last week are slightly encouraging. It's even possible that they've recognized what a suicide mission they've been on this last year and have taken some baby steps in the only direction available to them for survival, let alone any sort of redemption. Obama doesn't strike me as constitutionally able to throw a punch at an adversary. It's just not in his character. But this week, at least, he flicked a couple of spitballs. For this White House, that's progress.
In any case, there was much that was telling about the event. First, that this semi-hostile dialogue which many have compared to the British weekly tradition of Prime Minister's Question Time transpired at all was a somewhat profound development. Of course, that statement says far more about the pathetic nature of the American political system than it does about Obama or the cavemen from the Valley of the Right who questioned him. It's also enormously telling that the GOP resisted until the last moment allowing the cameras to roll during the question and answer period they really didn't want to go there. Think about that. You had a single meek politician going up against two hundred rabid bullies, and which side wanted to make sure the public didn't see the engagement? Did Republicans know something in advance that made them fearful of public exposure, even when going up against President Neville O'Bambi?
Perhaps it was the same thing that caused FOCS (Frighten Old Children Silly) "News" to cut away from the broadcast in the middle of it, despite the food-fight event being the very epitome of what television loves to show in politics. Uh-oh. Not only was Obama occasionally holding Republican feet to the fire, but he was even doing it without a Teleprompter! Evidently, the sight of the nice, genteel, reasonable black man helping a bunch of white sharks make themselves look like the stupid liars they are was all too much for Mr. Ailes and company. Seeing this was causing smoke to pour out of the ears of robo-regressives all across America, their circuits frying all at once. Cut to American Idol reruns, boys! Fast!
Why? Because Obama was actually making these lying thugs own, even slightly, the consequences of their destructive deceits. Here he was with the Republicans at their retreat, for example: "There was an interesting headline in CNN today: "Americans disapprove of stimulus, but like every policy in it.' And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed. Well, that's what the Recovery Act was. And let's face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities." Similarly, the next day he was tweaking seven Republicans who actually walked away from their own proposal for a bipartisan debt-cutting commission, just because the socialist president had subsequently agreed with them on the idea.
The Kumbaya Kid is considerably more gentle about whacking these Joe McCarthy protégés than I would be. I'd like to see a lot more Harry Truman out of him, and a lot less Harry Reid. A lot more Betty Friedan, and a lot less Betty Crocker. Just the same, the Massachusetts election may go down as an inflection point in this presidency, the moment at which the White House figured out that standing by silently and watching yourself get your ass kicked by dress-up cowboy cowards unarmed with anything but lies and bullying tactics turns out to be, amazingly enough, something of a strategic error in national politics.
But what I find so astonishing about moments like this is how revealing they are of simple truths that somehow manage to get lost, particularly in the ranks of the Democratic Party. To begin with, Barack Obama has been hard at work for a year now, crashing an enormously promising presidency that just happens to also have his name attached to it, and the way forward has always seemed to me so transparently clear. Regressives in Congress (some from his own party), representing parasitical special interests, are sucking the blood from the American polity, even as the corpse begins to stiffen in rigor mortis. Maybe I'm just a sucker for that old fashioned democracy gospel, but I still believe that many times good policy can also be good politics. How much greater public fury at banks and other corporate predators does there need to be before the president realizes that actually taking on the malefactors of great wealth in this society also happens to be the best thing that could happen to him politically? How many times does he have to lose public support because of the astounding fabrications people are promulgating about him before he decides to stop playing nice and call the liars liars?
After seeing the president in action this week, the obnoxiously abrasive pundit Chris Matthews opined that Republicans should fear Barack Obama's learning curve. That one gave me a real chuckle. As far as I can see, no one in America has more to fear from Obama's learning curve than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who is currently slated to be very much on the housing market in January of 2013. Indeed, the single thing most utterly astonishing to me about the Obama presidency is how such a politically astute candidate could turn out to be such an absolutely lame, slow-to-get-it, president.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Just-Gimme-Some-Truth-by-David-Michael-Gree-100206-128.html
Here is an excerpt that tickled my funny bone. Having read it I feel less alone:
Much as I hesitate to say it, the changes in the Obama White House this last week are slightly encouraging. It's even possible that they've recognized what a suicide mission they've been on this last year and have taken some baby steps in the only direction available to them for survival, let alone any sort of redemption. Obama doesn't strike me as constitutionally able to throw a punch at an adversary. It's just not in his character. But this week, at least, he flicked a couple of spitballs. For this White House, that's progress.
In any case, there was much that was telling about the event. First, that this semi-hostile dialogue which many have compared to the British weekly tradition of Prime Minister's Question Time transpired at all was a somewhat profound development. Of course, that statement says far more about the pathetic nature of the American political system than it does about Obama or the cavemen from the Valley of the Right who questioned him. It's also enormously telling that the GOP resisted until the last moment allowing the cameras to roll during the question and answer period they really didn't want to go there. Think about that. You had a single meek politician going up against two hundred rabid bullies, and which side wanted to make sure the public didn't see the engagement? Did Republicans know something in advance that made them fearful of public exposure, even when going up against President Neville O'Bambi?
Perhaps it was the same thing that caused FOCS (Frighten Old Children Silly) "News" to cut away from the broadcast in the middle of it, despite the food-fight event being the very epitome of what television loves to show in politics. Uh-oh. Not only was Obama occasionally holding Republican feet to the fire, but he was even doing it without a Teleprompter! Evidently, the sight of the nice, genteel, reasonable black man helping a bunch of white sharks make themselves look like the stupid liars they are was all too much for Mr. Ailes and company. Seeing this was causing smoke to pour out of the ears of robo-regressives all across America, their circuits frying all at once. Cut to American Idol reruns, boys! Fast!
Why? Because Obama was actually making these lying thugs own, even slightly, the consequences of their destructive deceits. Here he was with the Republicans at their retreat, for example: "There was an interesting headline in CNN today: "Americans disapprove of stimulus, but like every policy in it.' And there was a poll that showed that if you broke it down into its component parts, 80 percent approved of the tax cuts, 80 percent approved of the infrastructure, 80 percent approved of the assistance to the unemployed. Well, that's what the Recovery Act was. And let's face it, some of you have been at the ribbon-cuttings for some of these important projects in your communities." Similarly, the next day he was tweaking seven Republicans who actually walked away from their own proposal for a bipartisan debt-cutting commission, just because the socialist president had subsequently agreed with them on the idea.
The Kumbaya Kid is considerably more gentle about whacking these Joe McCarthy protégés than I would be. I'd like to see a lot more Harry Truman out of him, and a lot less Harry Reid. A lot more Betty Friedan, and a lot less Betty Crocker. Just the same, the Massachusetts election may go down as an inflection point in this presidency, the moment at which the White House figured out that standing by silently and watching yourself get your ass kicked by dress-up cowboy cowards unarmed with anything but lies and bullying tactics turns out to be, amazingly enough, something of a strategic error in national politics.
But what I find so astonishing about moments like this is how revealing they are of simple truths that somehow manage to get lost, particularly in the ranks of the Democratic Party. To begin with, Barack Obama has been hard at work for a year now, crashing an enormously promising presidency that just happens to also have his name attached to it, and the way forward has always seemed to me so transparently clear. Regressives in Congress (some from his own party), representing parasitical special interests, are sucking the blood from the American polity, even as the corpse begins to stiffen in rigor mortis. Maybe I'm just a sucker for that old fashioned democracy gospel, but I still believe that many times good policy can also be good politics. How much greater public fury at banks and other corporate predators does there need to be before the president realizes that actually taking on the malefactors of great wealth in this society also happens to be the best thing that could happen to him politically? How many times does he have to lose public support because of the astounding fabrications people are promulgating about him before he decides to stop playing nice and call the liars liars?
After seeing the president in action this week, the obnoxiously abrasive pundit Chris Matthews opined that Republicans should fear Barack Obama's learning curve. That one gave me a real chuckle. As far as I can see, no one in America has more to fear from Obama's learning curve than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, who is currently slated to be very much on the housing market in January of 2013. Indeed, the single thing most utterly astonishing to me about the Obama presidency is how such a politically astute candidate could turn out to be such an absolutely lame, slow-to-get-it, president.
There are plenty more thought provoking essays at his own site which I have labelled Regressive Antidote in my own weblist.
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