Second-Guessing Obama
Barack Obama’s economic team is now in place and it’s made up of centrists and Wall Street insiders. Nobody from ACORN or SDS made the inner circle.
Likewise, with the gelling of his national security team. Hillary as SoS, Bob Gates probably staying on for a while, and Dennis Kucinich or even Howard Dean unlikely to succeed him. I also have to figure that Rep. Barbara Lee isn’t on the short list for CIA director.
The Nation magazine’s Washington Editor Chris Hayes throws his hands up in the air and laments: “Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care.”
Hayes also cites blogger Chris Bowers who has his own complaint about Obama’s picks. Says Bowers: “I know everyone is obsessed with the “team of rivals” idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”
Um, I’m not sure what Bowers means by “an actual Democratic administration.” That’s pretty much what Obama’s cabinet is starting to look like — for better and for worse. I understand the “frustration” Bowers cites. But, fact is, Obama was elected by a majority of folks who are NOT self-indentified progressives, net-roots activists, nor subscribers to The Nation.
if Obama is to carry though in any meaningful way on his promised reforms, there’s going to be what we might call a certain level of tension introduced into the political debate. The new President has a choice: he can gather up a bunch of progressives in his cabinet (abating Bowers’ frustration) and then try to sell them and a reform program to a more centrist Congress and Democratic Party who will already be polarized by his appointments. Or, he can get prior buy-in from the Democratic center — as he is apparently doing– and thereby oil the passage of significant reform legislation.
I like the way Bob Kuttner puts it: “As progressives, we can view President-Elect Obama’s emerging economic team in one of two ways. Either he has disappointed us by picking a group of Clinton retreads–the very people who brought us the deregulation that produced the financial collapse; the fiscal conservatives who in the 1990s put budget balance ahead of rebuilding public institutions. Or we can conclude that he has very shrewdly named a team of technically competent centrists so that he can govern as a progressive in pragmatist’s clothing–as he moves the political center to the left.”
Which one it will be we will soon find out. The skeptics may turn out to be right. But I also join Kuttner in confessing that every time I second-guessed Obama during the campaign, he was right and I (and Kuttner) were wrong.
What counts are the policies, not the people.
I hope.
November 24th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Keep hope alive!
November 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
Obama and his people are already shaping up as far more progressive than FDR when he came into office. The fact that many on the right are nodding approvingly toward Obama is a signal of their total collapse, not his caving. I’m impressed to date, although have no certainty of how the Obama administration will ultimately go down in the history books. But I am certain that the usual naysayers are going to be tiny footnotes, however this thing turns out.
Kuttner’s “Obama’s Challenge” is a good read, by the way. It’s interesting that a consensus is growing at what approximates “the center” around something approaching the big moves Kuttner proposes in his book. Whether this is done “smart” is another matter.
These are strange times. I watched that crazy stock-picker Kramer on some cable news show this morning making a pitch for the government to bail out Citigroup. Buchanan is crying for the government to bail out the auto companies. They’re talking about hundreds billions of, in effect, public investment (with the devil, of course, in the details.) But do these guys recognize that they’ve reached essentially the same failure of a faith that members of the CPs faced when the Soviet Union collapsed ?
November 25th, 2008 at 2:31 am
Okay. So fiscal policy will be in the hands of the DLC. But that doesn’t mean Obama can’t have a Progressive foreign policy.
Oh wait!
November 25th, 2008 at 4:17 am
Fantastic post! I keep trying to say the same thing on my Blog, but you said it way better here than I ever could. Needless to say, I couldn’t agree more…
November 25th, 2008 at 6:13 am
The times they have been a’changin.
This isn’t 1992, so the Clinton progressives/DLC denizens will be operating from a center that is far safer on its right flank than in the Clinton days.
Bill won with less than 50 percent of the vote. The Cold War had ended, but the paradigm remained and the same weird mix of militarism and religion that fueled Reagan’s ascent was still active.
Bush trashed all that, probably once and for all. The coalition of religious, militarists and greedheds is no more, leaving “centrist” progressives like Obama and his appointees freer to seek activist government solutions without incurring political damage from being called commies or terrorists or whatever from the wingnutosphere.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:58 am
Anyone have any thoughts on this:
McCain and Obama Camps Coordinated on Building Staff Rosters for Next Government
Steve Clemons
The Washington Note
November 25th, 2008 at 7:01 am
E.J.Dionne: “Obama’s selection of a team of highly skilled pragmatists has already been described as a move to the political center, but Obama advisers and longtime acquaintances say that this is a misreading of the incoming president and his approach. They describe it as combining a practicality about means with an overriding concern about the corrosive effects of growing economic inequalities.
“Aides say that Obama was drawn to Summers in part because the former Harvard president shares the president-elect’s passion for a more equitable distribution of economic benefits. Obama was impressed during campaign policy discussions that Summers would often pull the conversation away from general talk about economic growth to a concern with the living standards of families with average incomes.
“Washington often divides the Democratic policy world between progressives and pragmatists. With Obama, as Monday’s news conference showed, it will have to become accustomed to a president who is both.”
November 25th, 2008 at 7:04 am
If Obama was smart, he’d appoint Marc Cooper as press secretary since he couldn’t find a better apologist.
November 25th, 2008 at 7:50 am
“digby”, a pretty relentlessly “progressive netroots” spokesperson sees it like this: “(Obama)sees himself as a pragmatist (‘my frame of reference is ‘what works”) who isn’t driven by political ideology.
“And if it were normal times, we might expect him to fulfill the Village’s ‘center-right’ domestic dreams based upon where the center of political gravity has been these last few years. But these are not normal times and conservative economics are completely inoperative in a severe economic crisis. So, he’s likely to be more liberal in that area than any of us ever dreamed he’d be, as will all of his neo liberal economic advisors. There is just no other choice available than massive government intervention, which is a fundamentally liberal concept. The only question is if they will be competent at carrying out liberal economic policies,or if they will persist in the current program of badly structured bailouts of badly run companies. Let’s hope it’s the former, because the latter is just more of what Bernanke calls ‘finger in the dike’ economics and they ain’t working.
“On foreign policy Obama campaigned on getting out of Iraq, escalating in Afghanistan and setting the world’s mind at ease that the United States is no longer a rogue superpower, and I have no reason to believe that’s not going to be the way it goes. I would worry a lot about the military — they tend to give youthful Democrats a hard time — but as with the economy, the military is falling apart too, so they may have limited choices there as well. We’ll see.
“The world is in crisis on all fronts and it was conservative philosophy and policies that brought us here. They have nothing to offer but more crisis, so by default liberalism is on the rise.”
November 25th, 2008 at 7:54 am
“If Obama was smart…” – the first four words of an awful lot of stupid suggestions that will be flooding the “discourse” these days and months.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Here’s what makes this discussion of “progressivism” and “pragmatism” ridiculous.
First, Barack Obama is not a liberal. That is not how he ran. He opposed the Iraq war. Other than that, the differences between him and the other Democratic candidates were negligible.
Second, the lefty media, whether The Nation or the netroots, decided he was liberal. Their reporting was fair, which makes them a far cry from the average media outlet or even the often mispronounced Fox News. But the conclusions they reached from their reporting were colored by their biases.
Finally, the same people who decided during the campaign that Obama is brilliant (I am one of them) now think he is an idiot because he doesn’t spend all day obeying Joe the Leftist. Please! Get a grip on yourselves.
November 25th, 2008 at 8:48 am
On November 4th this is what the Bush administration did while you guys were all whooping it up:
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/11/05/bush%E2%80%99s-parting-moves-on-the-environment/
Stop whining and contact your representatives to stop the rape
Under the radar and a sign of what might actually be in store is the fact that all the USDA good guys who spoke up and tried to suggest sustainable policies on agricultural practices and who were FIRED under Bush are all sending in their resumes to the new administration.
I had long chat with Ph.d head at county extension office who is heading up an agricultural policy council –that I am part of –to promote local, sustainable/organic food sources.
There is much excitement that NOW these policies will take root (ha ha) as they have in various communities scattered across the country.
Its getting information under the radar that demonstrates more of what is really going on.
Creating a sustainable, local food source ,wherever possible, is the lightening rod for any actual change as the acceptance of the necessity for it means re thinking everything.
Its what you do on the local level that will count…not all this locker room discussion on whose gonna pitch. play quarter back or tight end (?) (ha ha is there a “tight end”?)
The only thing an Obama administration means is that things will have a chance for change from the BOTTOM up. You fools are still looking for action from the TOP down.
Honestly, a woman’s work is never done.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:35 am
Did you know that Obama’s new “progressive” Attorney General, Eric Holder, said in a 2002 CNN interview that unlawful combatants are not POWs?
Maybe he can explain any change of heart in his Senate confirmation hearing.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:46 am
I’m going to imagine after seeing the Bush administration torture people, Holder’s thinking has evolved.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Michael Green: First, Barack Obama is not a liberal.
Marxist, perhaps.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Holder said interrogation methods for non-POWs can be harsher since not limited by the Geneva Convention. That sounds like the Bush policy.
But, I’m afraid that Democrats will be so easy on terrorists that they won’t expose plots, as Bush has done to stop them.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Obama is going after another Clinton insider:
Huff Post: Obama Team Mulls Role for Miss Lewinsky in New Administration
You can’t make that up. I say, go for it.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:13 am
Uh, you do realize that’s a humor piece, right? Billy Kimball writes satire. Did you know that the Obamas plan to have sex in the White House?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/billy-kimball/obamas-expected-to-have-s_b_145104.html
Once again, you Republicans show your slow-witted, humorless side.
November 25th, 2008 at 10:49 am
I assumed it was humor, but I posted it anyway not knowing the writer. Half the time you guys don’t know when I’m kidding.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Woody, it doesn’t matter if you’re kidding or not. No one takes anything you say seriously. And it all comes off as priceless comedy material anyway.
Sometimes I entertain the thought that you are a wicked punkster prankster posing as a dim witted Palinesque bigot who goes about stirring up mischief and ire to puncture the earnestness of liberals.
But, alas, you are just a dim witted Palinesque bigot with no sense of humor. In fact so little of it–or sense–you can’t even recognize satire when you see it.
Whats it like being you, Woody. And only finding filthy racist tat, funny?
Do you rifle round in the family attic for the old white sheet and pointy hat. Have a little secret dress up party. Let your mind revert to a little atavistic nostalgia…the good old days when good ol cross burnin’ would “them” in their place?
November 25th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Holder said interrogation methods for non-POWs can be harsher since not limited by the Geneva Convention
Where did he say that?
Here’s what he actually said:
So where did he say what you’re claiming he said?
November 25th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Anna, I’ve checked, and Marc has no posts titled with my name, yet you’re preoccupied with me. Your screeching explains why it’s no wonder that you’re not married.
Yet, ironically, given your immature personal attacks, this is what you had to say about me in another comment:
And Woody’s attempt to tar me with the brush of derrangement….is just Woody being the little fascist troll that he is.
Me, a troll? …and, you are exactly what? Please get some professional help.
To bring people back on topic, the title of this post is “Second-Guessing Obama.” I have refused to serve in his adminstration, so discuss someone else.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Over the course of 6 years Holder shifted from his initial reaction in the wake of 9/11 to a more mature, well-thought-out Constitutional perspective based on the problems and failures that became evident.
Of course, some people never change, admit they might have been mistaken or mature. An excellent example of this ignorant, inflexible pathology trolls this site, with an increasingly sedative effect on the readers.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Randy, you ask where Holder said the quote that I provided. Did you read my sentence? …Holder, said in a 2002 CNN interview that unlawful combatants are not POWs.
Here it is again, with a link to my source of that quote.
You can go by what Holder believed then or what politics dictates that he should say now.
What’s obvious is that Holder approved of Bush’s plan to deal with terrorists in 2002, before he became so self-righteous.
November 25th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Yeah, reg, it’s easy to change your views, or at least claim to, if you’re not the President and aren’t responsible for protecting the nation from terrorists. You’re really into excuse making.
November 25th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
“Nobody from ACORN or SDS made the inner circle.
Likewise, with the gelling of his national security team. Hillary as SoS, Bob Gates probably staying on for a while, and Dennis Kucinich or even Howard Dean unlikely to succeed him. I also have to figure that Rep. Barbara Lee isn’t on the short list for CIA director.”
Very cute, Marc but you forgot to mention that many us were pulling for William Ayers to be included in the inner circle. As for names, in the reality based universe, Richard Dreyfuss has more than a few
“We could all make lists of people that we might have chosen for secretary of state, defense, attorney general, homeland security, intelligence, and national security adviser. (True, not all of Obama’s appointments are certain, yet, but the writing is on the wall.) It’s now likely that not one of those posts will be filled with someone who either voted against the war in Iraq as a member of Congress or who, from outside Congress, vocally opposed the war. Not one.
What about Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, Chris Dodd, Sherrod Brown, and Jim Webb from the Senate? Where is John Kerry? What about Gary Hart and Al Gore? What about any one of a dozen or more prominent members of the antiwar and progressive caucuses in the House of Representatives, such as Lynn Woolsey, Jim McDermott, or Jim McGovern? What about the generals who, unlike General James E. Jones, didn’t campaign with McCain and who spoke out against the war? What about the many prominent experts on disarmament and nonproliferation, like Lt. General Robert Gard, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, and Peter Galbraith, all of whom serve on the board of directors of the Center for Arms Control? Or Joseph Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund, a leading arms control expert? Well, you get the idea.”
November 25th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Here’s the entire Dreyfuss post
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/385746/obama_s_foreign_policy_team
November 25th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Naomi Klein made an interesting point today, in her panel discussion with Kuttner. She argued that Left Liberals are in some ways stuck with people like Summers because they are paying the price for not being honest about the Clinton years. That in wanting to create a nice little dichonomy between the “good nineties” versus the horrendous Bush years, the Summer and Rubins have been let off the hook. There was a level of intellectual dishonesty invloved in this electoral strategy that should not be extended in order to now make excuses for Obama. Obama is elected, the time to hold him accountable begins now
November 25th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
We may all be going down in flames soon, but one thing is for sure.
Our government will spend every last dollar it has to make sure corporate America has every opportunity to continue business as usual. Trust me, Joe public will be left with nothing.
Maybe Obama’s excuse is that this is a time we need a team in charge to treat trauma as opposed to transformation which we can get around to as a grand promise before 2012. I think Marc is like an ostrich burying his head in the sand or people who cover the ears because the truth hurts. Well don’t worry Marc, Nader will still take you back!
November 25th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
GC: Our government will spend every last dollar it has to make sure corporate America has every opportunity to continue business as usual.
Clearly, Obama believes in trickle-down economics.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Woody, saw a car today with a back window decal that said:
Obama=Socialism.
Are you selling these on street corners now?
Not only am I married, Woody, but I have been married twice. And I am married to a jazz musician.
My ability to improvise intellectually and enjoy surreal riffs in order to bait closeted, racist twats like you was what made him fall in love with me.
Kisses.
November 25th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
I understand you keep warm with a woodchipper?
November 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
“Very cute, Marc but you forgot to mention that many us were pulling for William Ayers to be included in the inner circle.”
You get off on people who blow shit up, eh Ahmed?
Ahmed you are living in an adolescent fantasy world.
Why don’t you discuss what YOU are doing that can directly affect the quality of life around you.
Obama’s job is not to fulfill your father fantasies.
November 25th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
MY goodness is Anna C not one of the most obtuse, tone deaf posters around Coopersville? Anyone who isn’t a complete inbecile would have realised that my reference to Bill Ayers in the inner circle was not serious, it was directly playing off of Marc’s silly dismissive jab about the SDS and ACORN being left out. As if that’s what the crticism of Summers and others amounts too. That much seemed pretty obvious, at least I thought. And what’s this stuff about my “fathers fantsies” dare I ask
November 25th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Anna C. reveals more personal details under the microscope.
November 25th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
I’ve been away most of the day, so I’m responding a little late to say this. Woody, if you want to be conservative, be conservative. That would be a vast improvement over the right-wing bilge dispensed under the name of conservatism. But try finding out what Marxism is before suggesting that’s what Obama is. If he’s a Marxist, he’s a lot more like Groucho than he is like Karl.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Michael Green, I’m don’t know if you’re any more qualified to define Obama’s political and economic leanings than many others who have labeled him a Marxist–albeit a closet Marxist at this point.
Consider this:
That doesn’t sound like Groucho to me, but you “Bet Your Life” on Obama–a Marxist.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:16 am
Comrade Obama: Personal sacrifice for the good of the people.
November 26th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Marc writes interesting stuff, of which the current posting simply takes a reality based viewpoint to the Obama appointments. It seems like this Woody character does a good job of hijacking most threads because the rest of you take the bait. Suffice it to say that Woody wouldn’t recognize a real Marxist if he tripped over one. In addition, I seriously doubt whether anybody with a 14th grade education takes Marxian economics at all seriously, considering how it completely missed the concepts of marginal cost and marginal utility (not a crime, everyone else did for quite a long time) and defended a strange and indefensible position called the labor theory of value.
Or to put it another way: I’m seriously weary of social critics who reject math as a necessary prerequisite for understanding economic principles. I’m even more weary of social critics who ignore quantitative thinking as a necessary part of social thinking. What I read here is, to a considerable extent (but not all), simply the mirror image of Palin-speak. One clue is the over-generalization, in which anyone whose actions or words are found unacceptable is rejected for the crime of not being progressive enough, or not understanding the history of leftist thought well enough. I would suggest that the history of leftist thought is hard to understand because a lot of it is gibberish.
Marc points out the obvious, that an island dictatorship that doesn’t have elections, a free press, or honest trials isn’t something we should emulate, that a government that tortures and imprisons political opponents is to be rejected, and the fact that Cuba was opposed to many things the U.S. did (and which we rightly deplore) doesn’t mean that Cuban policies are defensible. The idea that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is at best a resort to the extreme needs of wartime (ie: as applied to Stalin), but shouldn’t be applied haphazardly.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Woody, in discussing Saul Alinsky, you are discussing someone you aren’t familiar with, and thus are constructing an image in your head that has nothing to do with reality.
There is no question whatever that Obama and his campaign are heavily influenced by the Alinsky organizing method. But that method, which focuses on identifying leaders in the community by getting people to organize around pretty much any issue that motivated them to come to a meeting. The method then provides ways to test the commitment of the emergent leaders.
In other words, the Alinsky method is totally content neutral, and has much in common with Amway or Herbalife, those icons of capitalism.
The ideology of a community organizer matters about as much as the ideology of your car mechanic. Of course that might matter to you, as leftists have cooties.
November 26th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Michael Crosby,
What do you expect when his source is the Biritish equivalent of David Horowitz?
November 26th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Woody,
Where did Holder say that interrogation methods could be harsher? Not once in the article you cite does he say that interrogation methods could be harsher. All he said was that interrogations would be limited under Geneva Conventions, which are limited to name rank and serial number.
Nowhere does he say that the interrogation methods could be harsher.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Woody’s pattern is to cite some guy talking about someone important with whom Woody is totally unfamiliar (not covered in the U of Phoenix accounting doctoral program). So Woody absorbs that ideologically-based commentary and takes a stab at who the subject at hand (Saul Alinsky, Reinhold Niebuhr, et al.) might actually be. It’s intellectually dishonest, but I guess we’re discussing him, so Mission Accomplished, as his role model would say.
November 27th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Have you ever thought about how off topic you guys get when you spend comment after comment discussing me?
Now, maybe I know as much as you guys on Marxism and Alinsky, because you haven’t showed me that you know more except to claim it with no other proof. That’s a somewhat dishonest argument.
This link is on topic.
Progressives’ Obama Buyer’s Remorse
November 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
I am determined no to engage this moron on any issue other than to confirm his putrid racism (see some of the recent threads over at Celeste’s blogs for sterling examples), but I think it’s funny as hell that he’s so utterly incoherent – just an attention-getting clown. He can’t get his story straight on Obama – either he’s a “marxist” with a socialist agenda OR his progressive backers have reason to be remorseful because they’ve not gotten what they hoped. Neither is true – I’m certainly not “remorseful” about Obama’s alleged “centrism” and don’t know anyone who is, nor is Obama a “marxist/socialist/Islamist/or any “other other” as Woody has serially alleged using crackpot links like Melanie Phillips – but even if one were true, the other couldn’t be. Woody has been so discredited – even by troll standards – he’s just a total fucking waste of time. He’s a child who wants attention.
November 29th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Nice article, it’s all so pretty.
March 17th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Hi all, we came here when i did a fast google search. Neat blog you have here! Keep it up!