Against Obama. Cherished reader Donald accuses me of hate and bias against the President and Cherished reader Braden accuses me of being part of the right wing attack machine. I do not in fact hate Obama at all. I just think he isn't up to the job. I am no part of any machine. I discovered the hero thing last night all by myself, and put my foot in my mouth all by myself.
But I note that, right now, the President has more to fear from the left wing attack machine. I noted in my last post the scathing reaction to the President's speech by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews. Yeah, they aren't the most respected names in political journalism, but they were fully anointed Barackites last year.
They aren't alone. Consider this, from Maureen Dowd:
How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self-destructive about politics?
President Obama's bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that a series of greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president.
And then there's Eugene Robinson:
Less than a minute into President Obama's Oval Office address, my heart sank. For the umpteenth time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began, an anxious nation was informed that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize. Obama's speech pretty much went downhill from there.
The president was cool, determined, forceful -- stylistically, all the things that the braying commentators said he had to be. But where was the substance? Specifically -- and urgently -- where was the new plan to contain the oil spill and protect the coastline? I wish I'd heard the president order the kind of all-out marshaling and deployment of resources that now seems imperative. But I didn't.
And David Broder:
If there is any value in President Obama's knocking himself out to dramatize on prime-time television his impotence in the face of the Gulf of Mexico oil leak calamity, I wish someone would explain it.
Ouch. Best of all, here is Robert Reich:
The man who electrified the nation with his speech at the Democratic National Convention of 2004 put it to sleep tonight. President Obama's address to the nation from the Oval Office was, to be frank, vapid. If you watched with the sound off you might have thought he was giving a lecture on the history of the Interstate Highway System.
Ouch, ouch.
My point is not that these criticisms are all valid. Only Robinson and Broder are on target, I think. What the nation wanted from Obama is a solution to the problem. The President didn't offer one, as Broder recognizes, because he doesn't have one.
My point is that has lost the confidence of a healthy part of the left. The Rasmussen daily tracking poll shows that 24% of likely voters strongly approve of the President's job performance, while 48% strongly disapprove.
The standard response to these numbers from the left is that it includes a lot of voters who think that Obama has been too conservative. Of course. But that is hardly good news for the left. It explains the enormous enthusiasm gap favoring Republicans, and that is the sort of thing that can ripple all the way down come November.
The best thing I have seen on this is the "Respect My Authoritah" monologue by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. Don't miss this. It is devastating. But I would add that, on almost all the points that Stewart complains about, the problem isn't that the President's heart isn't in the right place or that he isn't really trying. The problem is that he's responsible for keeping the next bomb from going off, and that has a way of narrowing your choices. Stewart and other liberals cannot forgive the President for recognizing reality.
UPDATE For another example of Obama disaffection on the left, see Joan Walsh's piece on Salon. Then scroll down. Ouch, ouch.
The criticism from the left comes for a good reason. It is akin to the criticism the right has been making. It's about presidental abuse of power and the blatent scrapping of the constitution. The constitution allows any form of government. Democracy, Republic, Socialism, Communism, or even a Democratic limited monarchy-style government if we so chose.
The ONE form of government it aims at preventing is tyranny. A government which assassinates rivals, imprisons people for standing up against them, and exists only to further it's own power. The expansion of the president's powers and the burning of the constitution will eventually will lead to tyranny. If you can be imprisoned without habius corpus, then the so called "freedom of speech" is completely null and void. Mr Bush didn't do these things, and I doubt Obama is doing them, but immagine if in the future we make a mistake and appoint someone with much more thirst for power into office. Someone who doesn't want to give up his power. The current laws would allow for such manipulation and no president seems interested in stopping it (despite campaign promises).
The last two presidents (bush and obama) have systematically strenghthed the power of the presidency while dismantling the constituion and the American people have allowed it to happen because we blindly squabble and throw inflamitory rhetoric back and forth at each other.
Rational dessent is impossible with such attitudes comming from both sides of the isle and America will continue to see abusive presidents and the degration of the country's values as long as rational dissent is deafened under the whitenoise of rhetoric.
Posted by: Marcus Ingot | Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 12:37 AM
Hey, I'm disappointed with Obama for not moving forward on a progressive agenda. But the liberal babbling class have this in common with the rightwing loonies: Obama isn't the progressive of their delusions. Obama is a technocrat, and the one thing technocrats understand is you let other technocrats work in their area of expertise. He has absolutely zero expertise in oil spill cleanups. He turns it over to people who do.
The problem is this: marine scientists and environmentalists have known for years what is hinted at by Broder and Robinson, but the fully fleshed out reason is there is no way to effectively and completely deal with an oil spill of this size in an ocean environment, That is why scientists and environmentalists have so strongly opposed drilling offshore. The only way to deal with it is to never let it happen. The technocrats, like Obama, think an effective government, one not devastated by years of conservative corruption and misrule (I include Clinton in this), can fix the problems in regulation ineffective government. I think not. Then there is the right, who want ineffective government, no regulations, etc., etc., the result of which is more and more spills, and ineffective plans for cleanup.
Posted by: Donald Pay | Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 06:31 AM
Donald: Obama is a technocrat? In what technology? I see very little evidence that the President is proficient in anything. The one area of expertise that he surely should have mastered is public communication. Yet he keeps going on the offensive on various issues, and the result is always dismal.
Of course the President is no expert in well technology, and pretty much has to get out of the way. But he keeps telling us that he is in charge, and pretending that he won't let this or that happen. His message is persistently contradictory.
As for deep water drilling, I think you've got a point. But you guys aren't exactly hot about drilling ON shore, are you? See ANWR.
Posted by: KB | Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 10:56 AM
Donald,
Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., was indicted Monday on federal charges of racketeering, soliciting bribes and money-laundering … A Federal grand jury has indicted former Representative Albert G. Bustamante of Texas on charges that he received many thousands of dollars in bribes while in office. Mr. Bustamante, a 57-year-old Democrat from San Antonio who went to Congress in 1985 and served there until being defeated in a bid for re-election last November, is charged with conducting the affairs of his office as a criminal racketeering enterprise. … Rep. Mel Reynolds (D-Ill.) was indicted today for allegedly having sex with a teenage campaign worker, persuading her to recant her allegations about it and asking her to get pornographic photos for him … Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in Cleveland, law enforcement sources told CNN. The 10-count, 130-page indictment includes charges of bribery, tax evasion, racketeering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice, the officials said. …Former U.S. Rep. Craig Washington, Democrat, of Houston has been indicted on a charge of aggravated assault with a gun, a second-degree felony. Washington is also under indictment for aellegedly failing to pay $610,000 in federal income taxes … Jurors deliberated for two weeks before convicting Walter R. Tucker, D-California, on seven counts of extortion and two counts of tax evasion … Craig Livingstone, head of the White House Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background report files without asking permission of the subject individuals; many of these were employees of former Republican administrations … When Clinton fired several longtime employees of the White House Travel Office, controversy began on May 19, 1993. A whistleblower's letter, revealed evidence of financial malfeasance which led to an FBI investigation … In January 2001 Clinton reached an agreement under which he was ordered to pay $25,000 in fines to Arkansas state's bar officials and his Arkansas law license was suspended for five years. The agreement came on the condition that Whitewater prosecutors would not pursue federal perjury charges against him … Over the course of the investigation, fifteen individuals — including Clinton friends Jim and Susan McDougal, White House counsel Webster Hubbell and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker — were convicted of federal charges. Except for Jim McDougal, none of them agreed to cooperate with the Whitewater investigators, and Clinton pardoned four of them in the final hours of his presidency …the Chicago Sun-Times writes that “As a state senator, Barack Obama wrote letters to city and state officials supporting his political patron Tony Rezko’s successful bid to get more than $14 million from taxpayers to build apartments for senior citizens. The deal included $855,000 in development fees for Rezko and his partner, Allison S. Davis, Obama’s former boss” … Chinagate: Twenty-two people were eventually convicted of fraud or for funneling Asian funds into the United States elections, and others fled U.S. jurisdiction. Several of these were associates of Bill Clinton or Al Gore ...
When you can see corruption and evil so clearly among conservatives, but the worst you can say about a Democrat is to call them 'technocratic' your credibility goes to nil
Posted by: BillW | Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 10:58 AM
KB,
Exactly. Obama leaves the details to the people who know their business. He does this in all sorts of areas--defense, financial reform, health care reform, etc. He is not a progressive in the modern sense; he's a Progressive in the older sense--the one that emerged from the Republican Party as a counter to the excesses of corruption in both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Unfortunately, he's in a far different era now.
Posted by: Donald Pay | Thursday, June 17, 2010 at 01:19 PM