NY Times Sunday Review

(Community Matters)  NY Times Sunday Review: What Happened to Obama?

I don’t intend these reflections as publicly breaking rank but in the belief we benefit from public dialogue on issues of such importance.

The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.

I’ve come to doubt that conciliation generates much success in today’s political environment. It could be that because of the transparency resulting from instantaneous communications (twitter,facebook,  internet news) and our parties’ primary systems, candidates who would normally negotiate in good faith for the common good are disincentived (yeah, I know I’m bastardizing English again)

Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it.

Like many, I believe it is unproductive that between a major share and a majority of US corporate profits are accounted for by the financial industry. I also believe Wall Street financiers & mortgage underwriters gamed the system and have escaped accountability. History does not favor either of these scenarios.

That, in turn, led the White House to feel rightly unappreciated for having saved the country from another Great Depression but in the unenviable position of having to argue a counterfactual — that something terrible might have happened had it not half-acted.

There’s a parallel here with the confidence we’re feeling about reelection – I continue to hear a practical-based confidence, ie., given the candidates of the other side, and while that is in fact practical, it begs the question of enthusiasm. After a recent local election (and building on many past data points), I said I wouldn’t again predict a win for a campaign that lacks the enthusiasm of a fervently dedicated base. Not news to anyone: we’ve got to rebuild a fervently dedicated base. I have very recently seen signs this could be accomplished among grassroots activists.

Americans don’t share the priorities of either party on taxes, budgets or any of the things Congress and the president have just agreed to slash — or failed to slash, like subsidies to oil companies. . . When pitted against a tough budget-cutting message straight from the mouth of its strongest advocates, swing voters vastly preferred a message that began, “The best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work.”

I don’t discount the recklessness of our projected deficit and agree joblessness is a higher priority. At times I lose confidence that we deserve to be reelected if we can’t deliver on jobs – is it 30% or 40% of Americans that are under & unemployed? . . . then, my practical side kicks in and I look at the alternative. I have to fight against the alternative, to not do so is the conciliation I argue against above. Then, I worry about the enthusiasm factor – back to not being sure we can or should win if we don’t create millions of jobs

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems.

This is where the article loses me. President Obama and this administration (admittedly building on perhaps the only successes of the previous administration) saved us from the economic abyss, saved and reformed the automobile industry, passed healthcare reform (where others failed for 60 years – admittedly a grossly imperfect one but one on which we can build) and outside of their economic teams, have hired and promoted what appear to be the best and brightest in the country (questions about nuclear energy regulation notwithstanding).

As to <<a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.>> I don’t see or believe this.

Centrist voters – I have raging biases about this concept at this time. My thoughts are unclear and not currently articulate nor especially productive.

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.

Compelling

And, we’re back to the practical side – I haven’t seen an even close, better candidate. While I regret the result of allowing all of us to project our wishes and dreams on one man during the 2008 election, it might say more about us and our disappointments after 9/11 than about our campaign. And, as contrary to the opening argument of the thesis as it might be, I suggest we consider percentages. Is Barack Obama 85% the president we want? 75%? 50%? Should we manage our own expectations?

In today’s broken political system, I’m not sure a more ideologically rigid candidate would have secured even our considerable wins. As to my own wishes that the President would have taken the 14^th Amendment option in the debt ceiling argument, I’m persuaded against that position by the argument that investors would not have purchased our bonds in the middle of the resulting constitutional crisis.

a not unrelated quote from Maureen Dowd:

Obama’s assumption that you can rise above ascribing villainous motives has caused him to waste huge chunks of his first term seeking bipartisanship from Republicans who were playing him for a dupe. And it has led to Americans regarding the nation’s capital as a place of all villains and no heroes.