They Loved It before They Hated It*
Yesterday I commented on Maureen Dowd's column on President Obama's failure to employ his political skills during his time in office. The moderators at the Times liked my comment so much they highlighted it as being "one of the most interesting and thoughtful comments." Admittedly, this doesn't mean much, as they often highlight some pretty stupid shit, but it implies they had read my comment. A few hours later a friend wrote to tell me the commenters had removed my "interesting and thoughtful comment" because it was off-topic or abusive. So here's the comment. You decide:
The problem is that the President has been anything but audacious. Jon Stewart aptly characterized those "big accomplishments" the President touts as "timid." Obama has taken such middle-of-the-road or right-leaning positions on everything that he appears to have done nothing brave or forward-looking at all. He hired most of Bill Clinton's old staff, & he proceeded to govern as if he were Clinton without the Charisma. One of the effects of growing up in situations where he was best off not to offend is that he seems to see both inoffensiveness and standoffishness as desirable styles of governance.
Though he has governed in much the way either Clinton would have, Obama seems more like Bush Pere than like the Clintons. The aloof, cerebral elitism we saw in Bush I is little different from what we see in Obama. President Reagan famously said of George I, "He doesn't really stand for anything." The same can be said for Obama. He hobnobs with the same gang of special interests, he appears indifferent to the atrocities he has perpetuated in Afghanistan, and his social policies are even more conservative than were those of George I. The Americans with Disability Act was expensive, but it had teeth. In just about every town in the country, we see evidence that it is working. Just step off a curb -- oh, wait, you don't have to because the curb now eases gently to the pavement for wheelchair access.
By contrast, Obama's healthcare & financial reform laws appear to be having little positive affect on people's lives. We see that in Obama's example of how well they're working. Again and again, he has trotted out the same New England woman who was able to get healthcare coverage when she couldn't before. I'm darned happy for that woman, but in a country of three million people, many of them still without health insurance and the rest seeing their healthcare costs continuing to rise, the good fortune of one woman who was able to capitalize on some sliver of the massive Affordable Care Law is cold comfort. Meanwhile, the Administration is giving waivers to companies like McDonalds, which pay their workers peanuts, but who still recoil at the weak mandate to provide healthcare coverage (at employee expense, of course).
Similarly, New York County, a/k/a Manhattan, is the U.S. county where incomes have risen the most. Why? Because Wall Street is in New York County. If you want a pay raise, get a job on Wall Street. I find Obama's assurances that he knows "we haven't done enough" infuriating. He's done enough for bankers and financiers. I was heartened to read that at least TARP turned out to be a pretty good deal, till the next week I read that the Secretary Geithner was cooking the books, underestimating the costs of deals like the one with AIG. Meanwhile, banks have been able to get away with foreclosing on homeowners without any paperwork except an affidavit telling the courts that really, they have that paperwork somewhere, at the same time the same banks are telling homeowners they can't refinance because their paperwork isn't in order. Not a peep from Obama about that! And as far as I can tell, the Consumer Financial Protection Board, which hasn't done anything yet, will do nothing more than give people another piece of paper that supposedly tells them what all the other pieces of paper mean. How helpful is that?
Don't get me started on human rights. There, we do see some audacity. Unfortunately, it's of the same type we recognize from Bush-Cheney. Left-leaning observers report audacious incident after audacious incident of "detainees" being deprived of basic rights. Even when "secret" documents & occurrences are known to the public, the Obama Administration invokes the state secrets doctrine. On the home front, we're still living under DADT & DOMA. The President told Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog last week that his position on gay marriage was "evolving." Let's hope that means it's "evolving" back to what it was in 2003, when he favored gay marriage. In the meantime, gay people with families and children who are growing up wondering why their parents don't get married like everybody else, just be patient!
As Obama says, change takes time. But there is little evidence that any change will ever take place. The Senate is sitting on some 500 bills the House passed, and there's no reason to think most of those bills will ever find their ways to the President's desk. Even if they do, they will be so watered down, like the bills that did get through, that they will do little to "change" anything.
It was a lot easier for Obama to sell that hopey-changey thing before he had to deliver on it than it now when we know he did not stand and deliver. Nowadays, sensible observers are just way short on hope that things are gonna change.
* Update: after a couple of hours, they loved it again & reposted my comment.
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