No, he can't

Even though President Obama can still give a good speech, it's not too early to assess the latest failed American presidency.

Making advanced investments to create jobs and industries, as well as making America more competitive? No, he can't. Closing Guantanamo? No, he can't. Preparing America for a future of high energy costs and resource competition? No, he can't. Ending our ill-considered imperial adventures in the Muslim world? No, he can't. Addressing climate change? Reforming the dangerous Wall Street casino? Correcting bad trade deals that have cost millions of American jobs and closed thousands of American manufacturers? The employee free-choice act? Overcoming special interests. No. No. No. Hell, no.

Barack Obama is one of the most gifted politicians in my lifetime. When he was elected, the comparisons were abundant: The second coming of Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, FDR. None of that turned out to be real. Instead, the comparisons now trend to Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. If the Republicans were not so crazy, Mr. Obama would be a one-term president. With Mitt Romney lurking in the wings, he may yet be.

How did we go from so much hope to such despair in less than two years? It wasn't one mistake.

Mr. Obama chose retreads from the Clinton administration, especially those such as Larry Summers who were as tied as Phil Gramm to the policies of deregulation and bad trade deals that helped cause the Great Recession. Real reformers such as Paul Volcker, Joe Stiglitz and Elizabeth Warren were marginalized. Among the most amazing choices was Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff: What did this supposed tough guy accomplish? Perhaps Mr. Obama wanted to convey a sense of stability and continuity, especially because he was the first African-American president. He behaved too much as a "pleaser," a middle-class person who made it into the elite and wanted to salve the elite's fears of real change. Whatever the strategy, it failed. The Republicans, in the guise of the Tea Party, successfully painted him as "the other," an anti-business socialist. (God, for some social democracy).

The president wasted a year on health-care reform, a year that could have been focused like a laser on economic reform that created jobs and allowed him to be the tribune of the middle class, rather than being seen as a tool of Wall Street and a corporate America that doesn't want to hire Americans. The result was a dog's breakfast of some good measures but mostly compromises that benefited the for-profit health industries and is so complex that it can be used as a cudgel with which to beat Obama and the Democrats into defeat.

"Never let a crisis go to waste," was supposedly the motto of the worthless Emmanuel. Yet that's exactly what the Obama administration did. It inherited the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — and an old order that had shown its complete bankruptcy. This was the time to break up the big banks and highly consolidated industries. It was the time to aggressively prosecute the evildoers who brought on the crash. A new Glass-Steagall. A return to antitrust enforcement. Incentives for productive activity and major investments in infrastructure. A push to make corporations and the very rich pay their fair share of taxes. A chance to show how progressive governance could again benefit average Americans, as they reached the tipping point caused by decades of "conservative" malpractice. Instead, Mr. Obama dithered, compromised everywhere, chose a corporate lawyer as attorney general, was continually punked by Republicans.

"The fierce urgency of now" turned out to be "nevermind." The nation faces multiple crises of discontinuity, especially from climate change, peak oil and resource competition. Mr. Obama has done little more than fund studies of high-speed rail, some weatherization and some solar. This as China leaps ahead.

Empire and all its costs continue as if John McCain had won. Mr. Obama turns out to be every bit the tool of the Military-Industrial Complex as his predecessors. We're stuck in Afghanistan, and don't forget Iraq, as if the Vietnam War had never happened. As if the enmity of 1 billion Muslims is nothing. The American imperialists and their vast profits and power run the ship of state. As Andrew Bacevich writes in the New Republic, "The release of Bob Woodward's new book Obama’s Wars ... depicts a president who not only gets rolled but who knows when he is getting rolled and still allows it to happen." Empire, like our hollowing-out, debt-dependent economy, like our paralysis on climate, is unsustainable. That Mr. Obama has perpetuated this borders on criminal negligance. 

Never did Mr. Obama decide to make a stand. To fight, as FDR did in 1936, where he welcomed the hatred of the "economic royalists." Or where Harry Truman did in 1948, fighting a GOP "party of no."

Whatever the results of the mid-term elections, America has another failed presidency, another institution whose legitimacy is in question. No real patriot can find this comforting.

Yes, the power of the plutocracy is greater than ever. And the corporate media often works against getting out the truth. It's no excuse. Can Obama right things? I doubt it. I wonder if he even wants to.

 

 

Comments

[CDT]

Everybody who has raised children recognizes learned helplessness when they see it. Obama and Reid both practice it. They have no interest in change, except as a campaign slogan. Never has the American political landscape produced such despair.

[Jacob]

I still can't decide if Obama is a sellout or if he really did all that he could given the circumstances (i.e., an effete, feckless Democratic Party and a reckless, short-sighted GOP). Probably somewhere in between.

[Petro]

@Jacob:

Sellout.

A nice breakdown here:

The Public Option and the Unenthusiastic Left

[Petro]

Looks my link from the above comment got lost. Here's the direct URL:

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/75215

[azrebel]

During the campaign, while everyone around me was being swept off their feet by the promise of hope, I kept saying, "but he's just a Chicago lawyer". As the hype grew, I kept on saying, "He's just a Chicago lawyer".

Sometimes, I hate it when I'm right.

I wouldn't have trusted him to babysit my pet, much less my country.

I've been around long enough to be able to recognize a true leader. He ain't a leader.

Our politcal system has perfected the process of scaring off/ getting rid of true leaders. We are left with the chaff.

[Jacob]

Thanks, Petro. I still don't think you could have found 51 Senators in that glorious summer of 2009 who would have gone against Big Pharma, Fox News, and the Tea Party all in one fell swoop.

[Jim Hamblin]

So who will rescue us from our national malaise? Until we curb the influence of the corporate-driven lobbyists, aren't we destined to be locked into a long, slow dance to the tune of "We're In The Money"?

[azrebel]

Jim, from my reading of history, empires usually die a slow, agonizing death. I hope it's just a curable malaise. Otherwise, it's going to be a long painful decline.

[eclecticdog]

Bacevich called Obama out long ago, before the election, on Bill Moyers show. Anyone of conscience or thought knows we are in decline as a nation. We hope it will be long and gentle, rather than abrupt and violent, but I don't think the Tea Baggers want that. The promise of naked power is too glowing.

[Emil Pulsifer]

Mr. Talton wrote:

"How did we go from so much hope to such despair in less than two years? It wasn't one mistake."

It wasn't multiple "mistakes" either. Part of the tiger from the outset, I'd say. From "Friendly Fascism" by Bertram Gross:

"Under the full-fledged oligarchy of friendly fascism, the Chief Executive network would become much more powerful than ever before. And the top executive-in America, the president-would in a certain sense become more important than before. But not in the sense of a personal despotism like Hitler's.

"Indeed, the president under friendly fascism would be as far from personal caesarism as from being a Hirohito-type figurehead. Nor would a president and his political associates extort as much "protection money" from big-business interests as was extracted under Mussolini and Hilter. The Chief Executive would neither ride the tiger nor try to steal its food; rather, he would be part of the tiger from the outset. The White House and the entire Chief Executive network would become the heart (and one of the brain centers) of the new business-government symbiosis. Under these circumstances the normal practices of the Ultra-Rich and the Corporate Overlords would be followed: personal participation in high-level business deals and lavish subsidization of political campaigns, both partly hidden from public view."

Mr. Talton wrote:

"A chance to show how progressive governance could again benefit average Americans, as they reached the tipping point caused by decades of "conservative" malpractice. Instead, Mr. Obama dithered, compromised everywhere, chose a corporate lawyer as attorney general. . . Mr. Obama turns out to be every bit the tool of the Military-Industrial Complex as his predecessors."

Well, surprise, surprise (sarcasm). Obama had to have the support of the Democratic Party Leadership to have a viable campaign for the presidency. Who funds the Democratic Party Leadership (and the Republican Party Leadership) except the Usual Suspects?

You can't be a player if you aren't willing to play. Where was Obama going to get a list a "viable" cabinet members and advisers from? Everyone imagines the President of the United States as an individual leader with deeply researched personal ideas, but even overlooking the fact that Obama was a rather youngish Senator from Illinois, he had to satisfy his party's leadership to get his party's support, and the day to day practical work is done by professional staff from a bureaucracy which owes its loyalty to the party leadership. If Obama had not demonstrated a willingness toward "practical compromise" early on, he would never have received his party's nomination, would he?

[Emil Pulsifer]

I couldn't help noticing your Front Page headline "Automation increasingly a threat to U.S. workforce". It's only a threat because the workforce does not own the means of production. If they did, they would surely share in the increased leisure (at no detriment to their personal incomes) from increasing automation.

[Rate Crimes]

"'The fierce urgency of now' turned out to be 'nevermind.'" - Rogue.

I must have misheard that slogan, I could have sworn it was said, "The fierce urgency of cows".

[Rate Crimes]

"How did we go from so much hope to such despair in less than two years?" - Rogue.

Can any real hope be derived from the noise that emanates incessantly from television?

[soleri]

Obama's "hope" was that the elites that run this nation could make the grand compromises necessary for this nation's survival. All they needed was a wonkish president capable of hearing them out, someone who could then split the differences and forge new policy. He never mean't to include us because there's no mechanism of self-government that does that. This is not a plebiscatory democracy and for good reason.

What Obama didn't know is that the elites themselves are no better. He actually presumed they would want to bargain in good faith, that their self interests were congruent with the national interest. No and no.

The so-called Vital Center has been an atrophied relic in our politics for a generation now. How did Obama miss this? How could he naively presume bipartisan bonhomie in a nation that impeached a president for oral sex? Or a nation willing to go to war on the pretext of self-deluding rationalizations? Did Obama think this was merely a failure of leadership and not something rather more serious? Say, imperial decadence and the exhaustion of national purpose?

Vanity Fair has an excellent piece on John McCain (http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/11/mccain-201011?currentPage=all) that poses the question how McCain might have fared over these past 20 months (hint: not well). I'm not sure if there's an answer in the Great Man theory of history, but it's likely that there is no one on a white horse who can save us from ourselves. We might be better served if we can get Jon Stewart to mock our childish wish for secular deliverance.

[azrebel]

MELTDOWN IN GLENDALE

If God had intended for there to be hockey in the desert................He would have made it COLDER in AZ.

[Kevin]

Obama understood the risks I think. He simply bet that Americans (Oligarchs included) would behave like rational people trying to better the nation. It remains to be seen whether he has lost or not. But the cards he has shown look pretty weak. Perhaps if he can hold the congress, he may still have a winning hand.

It's hard to blame Obama for "poor messaging" or "naive political strategy" when the people of the country have decended into mindless, overfed clowns. Are there enough reasonable Americans left to hold this nation together? We might be ungovernable at this point.