As progressive criticism of the Obama administration has intensified, the critics of the critics have stepped forward to defend the White House. Much of the case comes down to saying that Obama’s lefty critics don’t know how the game is played in Washington.
Jonathan Chait from the New Republic had a New York Times Magazine piece this weekend (9/4/11) taking issue with Obama critics like Glenn Greenwald, accusing them of “magical thinking” about the power of the presidency. As the argument goes, Congress can stop what the White House wants to do, so you can’t blame Obama for not winning more progressive victories.
I am fairly certain that people like Greenwald or Paul Krugman know how Congress works. Their criticism of Obama is more substantive–that the policies he advocates aren’t very good even before one factors in what Eric Cantor or John Boehner are going to say about them.
The next part of his critique was even less convincing. Chait wrote that Obama’s liberal critics think he should have been bolder on the economy, but there’s a problem:
It’s worth recalling that several weeks before Obama proposed an $800 billion stimulus, House Democrats had floated a $500 billion stimulus. (Oddly, this never resulted in liberals portraying Nancy Pelosi as a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.) At the time, Obama’s $800 billion stimulus was seen by Congress, pundits and business leaders–that is to say, just about everybody who mattered–as mind-bogglingly large. News reports invariably described it as “huge,” “massive” or other terms suggesting it was unrealistically large, even kind of pornographic. The favored cliché used to describe the reaction in Congress was “sticker shock.”
If I’m understanding this correctly, Chait is saying that media coverage of the debate over the stimulus was terribly misleading. That seems true. But how does that have any bearing on what his critics are saying? As this Firedoglake post pointed out, plenty of nonentities like Dean Baker, James Galbraith and Mark Zandi argued at the time that the stimulus wasn’t large enough. If Chait’s point is that these economists “don’t matter” in elite circles, he might have a point. But that’s a very different critique than the one he’s making–and one that actually makes a lot more sense than his other argument.
Perhaps Jonathan Chait thinks it’s the fault of Obama’s critics that nobody listens to them because he and every else ignores them when they’re right. Or something.
I’d call Pelosi a congenitally timid right-wing enabler.
(Although I’d use another adjective than “timid”.)
But I’m not a liberal.
I’m sick of Obama’s two-faced timidity! He comes-on in 2008 with all this ‘CHANGE’ talk and vaguely progressive attitude, and one figured (after discounting half of it for typical political posturing that any candidate has to do to get the nomination of a major party in this corrupt day-and-age) that AT LEAST he was politically savvy (or surrounded by such people) enough that he KNEW what the political layout was WHEN HE STARTED CAMPAIGNING !! That at least he’d TRY to push in the right direction. Like a good poker-player he’d be able to parlay his momentum and the electorate’s backing into some major accomplishments. Then he gets in-office and starts this ‘OH, jeez, people have to realize that the Republicans aren’t going to pass this legislation’… well no-shit, sherlock! Where the hell have you been the last 30 years?? Sorry to be a little raw about this, but can’t he at least come up with a better excuse for his capitulation, one that won’t insult our political awareness? To use a sports analogy, it’s like a first-round draft pick in the NFL promising that he’s going to CHANGE the win-loss record of the team that drafted him — then when he gets to the first game he comes up with the excuse that ‘those opposing players in the NFL are REALLY GOOD, and they’re big too! People shouldn’t expect me to be able to change this team – – it’s too big of a job for one person! (etc, etc)’
I have to say that I’ve long believed (starting with Obama’s appointments after his election) that he’s just a Goldwater Republican (which nowadays is a ‘liberal’) using progressive talking-points to get elected and then doing Republican policy.
The worst offender with this ‘magical thinking’ business is Matt Yglesias. He never stops lecturing his readers about how unrealistic it is for a president (at least THIS president) to do anything but blow with the wind from congress.
Big Em has nailed it. Obama is a Goldwater Republican, period. The only difference is that Goldwater was honest about it.
With all the supposed intelligence gathered by the white house – Gosh almighty, why can’t Obama uncover the true feelings in America? And more importantly why is he unwilling to crush the backers of his naysayers? I suspect, maybe, I at first misjudged who Obama is. He is not the progressive I imagined. But, rather a selected candidate from the fascists who needed protection after stealing America.
Campaign pitch-slap these Baracketeers back to the Bush leagues, along with their Idol CLA$$ Prexy!
Obama stepped in promising to recreate America.To level the playing field.To redistribute the hard earned wealth of this country to….well to whomever he saw fit.He promised to end war,and raise the oceans.Now you see that ideology aside -he was a very unqualified Politician, with a capital P!Big surprise.if he fooled you,shame on you.Now his every move is calculated toward re-election.I wonder……..is their buyers remorse that it was not Hilary?A much more savy(and intelligent)and experienced person .Ready to switch if she entered this race?
The reason Greenwald is hated by folks like Chait is that he’s not a team player. Greenwald points out the unpleasant facts about our Republican President, and people like Chait exclaim “He’s our guy! Stop helping the Right! Get onboard! Look at all the wonderful stuff Obama’s done!” And my very favorite enabling lie, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Well, Greenwald’s not going to shut-up, (nor is FAIR), so Chait’s blood will continue to boil, and his bad arguments will continue to float to the top of the rancid pool of the Beltway press.
While I’m not all that interested in a firebaggers vs obambot pissing contest, I’m constantly surprised by people who are disappointed that the President isn’t governing as a leftist. He was the most moderate of the three major Democratic candidates in 2008.
Obama was like Clinton, they were bridge presidents to get through what the more obvious fascists wanted but couldn’t being Republicans. The perfect cover. Allow only two parties to rule. All others don’t have a chance. Then take them over. Use them to get what you want done. So far they have the Republicans in total and the leadership in the Democrats so no one outside of their thinking has a chance to run for president and get elected by us. Our choices have been removed deliberately.
Obama is no moderate nor a Liberal nor a Progressive. He is a Regressive who uses passive-aggressive acts to get what his constituents want. Ultimate power. Which is why a make note of what he says just to see what he does, and doesn’t do to screw us over for his friends and fellow rich, his benefactors and colleges.
Night gaunt
I think your last paragraph cuts close to the truth.If i may be so bold,i would change one thing.You said he is”no moderate,nor a liberal,nor progressive”.I would say he is ALL those things….when needs be.
Who he really is at his core is a very complicated question.He has always held that close to his vest.I do not think any president in my lifetime has ever been so cloaked.
One question.You say “us”(……president and get elected by us) as in…whom?
Actually Obama is the most progressive person ever to occupy the White House. He is the only one with a genuine movement background, the only one who has ever lived in the global South (what we used to call the Third World), the only one descended from colonial subjects. Without question Obama has made mistakes, particularly in the beginning of his term when he “let a good crisis go to waste,” to quote Rahm Emmanuel. It is easy to enumerate the things he should have done: re economic issues, Guantanamo, war and peace, abortion rights, etc. But it is not so easy to say how he could have done them, especially after the early concessions he made. Chait may not be right about everything, but at least he presents an analysis, as opposed to the spewing and splenetic comments made here. Hart also falls short on the analysis side of things.
Obama is as smart as anyone on this list. He understands the profound political anxiety that this country is living through, after it has been pushed relentlessly to the right since 1980 at least. He knows he is a black man leading a deeply racist society, which none of the commentators here cares to acknowledge. He knows the extent to which the US economy (and the world economy) have been financialized. He knows how corrupt the Congress and the courts are, and how restive and Islamophobic the military and CIA are. Is anyone here even thinking about that stuff?
This is what “magical thinking” is about: since one knows what should happen and since one knows at least in a general way what is wrong (Wall St., Petraeus, torture, the Tar Sands pipeline,etc.), the apparent unwillingness of Obama to make the necessary corrections must constitute a betrayal, a secret Reaganism or even fascism… In many ways this loss of perspective comes from an understandable sense of pain and hurt. But that is not intelligent. It is not the equivalent of political analysis, much less effective political action.
So: rather than succumb to the magical thinking of many on the left ( Chait has that quite right), it would be more useful to think about and act upon how we on the left can be practical allies of Obama and the Democrats. Rather than mimic the Tea Party in a mirror-phase approach (for them he’s a secret Muslim, for you he’s a secret Reaganite), think about mobilizing on the left as the Tea Party (all their astroturf qualities notwithstanding) has done on the right. This would mean ceasing attacking Obama in the mindless way evident here on the comments page, but instead presenting left policy alternatives within the big tent of the Dems, and mobilizing and demonstrating for them. The people demonstrating against the pipeline have it pretty much right: they are not dismissing Obama (who clearly made a short-sighted and wrong decision on that issue because he was trying to create jobs), but they are calling him out — as allies — for abandoning basic environmental commitments. Where else do you have to go, people? Will you organize for the Republicans by encouraging people not to vote or to do loony 3rd party stuff? All of us: women’s groups, black groups, environmentalists, immigrants’ rights groups, unions, etc., can unite to pressure him from the left; you should stop your sobbing right now.
I’m talking to you FAIR, as well. I’m talking to you, Glenn Greenwald. Try to get busy and get useful.
As long as we attempt to organize ourselves around identity and not shared interests we will be victimized by those who wear our cherished identities like masks, showing us the image calculated to gain our support while working always for their own ends.
Slippingintodarkness
I will step over your ideological beliefs and their inherent failings.Your premise is still built on a house of cards.The idea(never proven) that Obama “knows” anything.That he is this great and omnipresent intellect looking down on the multitudes who just don’t understand his form of genius has proven to be nonsense.The king has no clothes sir.He seems a slow witted man who invariably make the wrong call.I see nothing in his first three years to show any great intellect.Maybe it would be a good thing to form a grass root party as you stated.But get behind someone better than Barock Obama.
Obama derangement troll is Obama derangement trollingâ┚¬Ã‚¦..