Why hasn’t Obama gotten results liberals like?
Glenn Greenwald:
When has Obama ever done any of that? When does he offer stirring, impassioned defenses of the Democrats’ vision on anything, or attempt to transform (rather than dutifully follow) how Americans think about anything? It’s not that he lacks the ability to do that. Americans responded to him as an inspirational figure and his skills of oratory are as effective as any politician in our lifetime. It’s that he evinces no interest in it. He doesn’t try because those aren’t his goals. It’s not that he or the office of the Presidency are powerless to engender other outcomes; it’s that he doesn’t use the power he has to achieve them because, quite obviously, achieving them is not his priority or even desire.
Interesting theory. I’m not sure I’m completely sold — at this point I think it’s more a little of column “GOP obstructionism”, a little of column “not much motivation for / interest in implementing liberal/progressive policies”.
I do definitely buy into the idea that there’s little political motive for implementing such policies. The Obama halo effect is pretty strong, just as it was with Clinton, and as a politician focused on re-election, Obama’s going to do his best to court folks not already in his camp.
However, the idea that Obama simply has no or little interest in implementing programs and policies that were effectively campaign promises is a little too cynical for my tastes. What seems like a more reasonable conclusion to me is the following: while Obama would certainly like to implement these programs and have defense cuts and spend badly needed billions on infrastructure, STEM education and the like, his political calculus is (quite a bit) more complicated. In this exercise, I imagine he views his first term as a mixed bag, but something he’s ultimately proud of.
Unfortunately, my rating of Obama’s first term is a bit more negative. However, while I’m not sold on supporting Obama in the Democratic primary coming in 2012 in principle, I don’t really think there’s a reasonable chance of anyone better emerging. But we shall see, as the election machine slowly grinds into motion yet again (groan).