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Oh my god.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
This is far worse than I thought.
I've been struggling to understand the implosion of the Obama presidency over the last two years, trying to peel back the layers of the theoretical onion, looking for an explanation as to how this could have happened.
How does somebody with managerial and strategic skills brilliant enough to come from out of nowhere and win the presidency, wresting it away from at least two lions of the political establishment, run such a stupid and failing White House?
How does somebody with the guts to go into the consummately ugly ring of presidential campaigning, and the perseverance to stay in there taking shots for two years straight, manage to turn around and become such a coward, especially after he's been handed the most powerful position in the world?
How does somebody with the communications skills of a Lincoln or a Kennedy wind up sitting by silently, while the worst elements of American society define him in the most disgustingly pejorative terms imaginable?
What the hell is going on here?
There are lots of theories.
Obama himself has argued that many people saw the campaign he ran as far more perfect than it was. There is some truth to this, especially since when the Republicans really came out swinging against him, in August and September of 2008, he sat there - like any good Democrat would - paralyzed and unresponsive. The result was that McCain - even with the pathetically unprepared Sarah Palin attached to his hip - drew nearly even with Obama in the polls at that point. That fact becomes all the more amazing considering that McCain was the Republican nominee, and the country was incredibly sick of Republican rule, having barely survived it for eight years running. But that's what happened, and arguably had it not been for the economic implosion on Bush's watch that fall, Obama's miracle campaign would have miraculously managed to sit back and silently snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Still, though, Obama ran a pretty flawless campaign. And he overcame some substantial hurdles, in some cases with a grace that elevated American politics in ways not seen for decades. And he came from near obscurity to win the election (in 2000 - just eight years before he became the party's nominee and was elected president - he couldn't even get admitted to the Democratic convention), and defeat two politicians who were handicapped as far more likely to win, just a year prior. That's pretty amazing talent.
Another theory would suggest that shrinking cowardice is simply endemic to the contemporary Democratic Party. Ever since George McGovern's electoral fiasco of 1972, Democrats seem to have decided that being a pinata is somehow the preferred persona for members of their party to adopt. Or maybe they're just satisfied to govern in between the cycles of Republican catastrophe, when voters give them the keys to the car only because letting the drunken malevolent teenagers of the GOP continue to drive has become just too awful to consider. But that concept never made a lot of sense to me. People like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama invested enormous energy and grit to realize a lifetime ambition of becoming president of the country. Why would such individuals all of a sudden morph into Missy Milquetoasts?
Perhaps a better explanation for the failure of Obama and his ilk to
fight hard for the country's welfare and for progressive values is that
he is no progressive at all. I've been arguing that for a long time,
and he is certainly helping to reaffirm that notion right now by
appealing a federal court decision ending Don't Ask Don't Tell, a policy
which he claims to oppose. But, in fact, the Obama ideology ship
sailed a long time ago. He previously also went to court defending the
Defense of Marriage Act. He bailed out Wall Street a hundred pennies on
the dollar, and demanded nothing of them in return. He has tripled the
US presence in Afghanistan, and is bombing the snot out of Pakistan.
He has not closed Guantanamo, and has an even worse record on civil
liberties than Bush and Cheney did. His health care bill is a total
gift to insurance corporations, and now we've just learned from Tom
Daschle that the president had never considered the public option at
all, having cut a deal with those corporations in advance promising that
there would be no such component in the legislation.
And so on, and so on. Stupid voters make the erroneous assumption that politicians like Bill Clinton are liberal because they are Democrats, and because the right and the media keep telling them that these guys are liberals. Most of the country has now done the same for Obama, but of course the opposite is true. So maybe the explanation for his failed presidency is simply that he has adopted the same regressive policies that have been killing the country for three decades now.
Of course, that might just be because his politics happen to be lousy. Or - according to another theory - his presidency might suck because he is beholden to the same oligarchical interests as just about everyone else in Washington. Barack Obama let BP completely run amok, before and after the Gulf disaster. He also has received about $80,000 in campaign contributions from them over the last half-decade, more than any other American politician. Maybe that's a coincidence, but I don't think so. Similarly, Wall Street poured tons of money into his campaign, while he gave them nearly everything they could have dreamed of, and staffed his economic team with all the slimy little Goldman Sachs geckos he could find. Was that an accident? Doesn't seem likely. In other words, maybe Obama's failures are hard to explain because they aren't failures at all. Maybe he is serving his plutocratic masters quite well, thank you very much.
All these are possible explanations for the unexpected meltdown of this presidency. But I have another theory now. An "Oh my god" theory.
