I am no fan of Andrew Sullivan, but here I think he’s seeing something that seems to elude others:
… given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb. Their short-term outbursts have missed Obama’s long game—and why his reelection remains, in my view, as essential for this country’s future as his original election in 2008.
Sullivan argues that the President has a pattern:
To use the terms Obama first employed in his inaugural address: the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider. This kind of strategy takes time. And it means there are long stretches when Obama seems incapable of defending himself, or willing to let others to define him, or simply weak. I remember those stretches during the campaign against Hillary Clinton. I also remember whose strategy won out in the end.
For example:
What liberals have never understood about Obama is that he practices a show-don’t-tell, long-game form of domestic politics. What matters to him is what he can get done, not what he can immediately take credit for. And so I railed against him for the better part of two years for dragging his feet on gay issues. But what he was doing was getting his Republican defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to move before he did. The man who made the case for repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell†was, in the end, Adm. Mike Mullen. This took time—as did his painstaking change in the rule barring HIV-positive immigrants and tourists—but the slow and deliberate and unprovocative manner in which it was accomplished made the changes more durable. Not for the first time, I realized that to understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does.
It’s an interesting analysis, and I’d like to know what you think of it.
BTW, this piece apparently is being featured in the new issue of Newsweek and the cover blurb asks “Why are Obama’s critics so dumb?” This has drawn much ire from rightie bloggers, who assume “Obama’s critics” are all on the Right.
THIS!
And isn’t this basically what most of us here at maha’s site have been saying for all of these years?
If you want to see a much more Liberal Obama, give him a majority of Liberal’s in the House and Senate – sans the odious Red Dogs.
Now, if only Jane, Glenn, and their ilk, would listen to Sullivan.
And by the way, this is the reason why the Conservatives are so desperate – the country is changing. And that’s why they’re trying to do as much harm as possible, trying to change voting requirements, before they become a dirty, shit-stained footnote in history books.
Obama’s shown them that he can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. And he should be admired, not derided, for this skill.
thanks, Barbara! I’m passing this along
Maybe the cover title, “Why are Obama critics so dumb,” has “drawn ire” because folks don’t like to have the issue framed ab initio in terms of being called stupid merely for disagreeing with the great Andrew Sullivan? I’m a left critic of Obama, and I don’t much like being called “dumb” either.
As for the substance, bah!
Sure, Obama inherited a financial mess. But what did he do to solve it? Give everything Goldman, Sachs and the rest of the Wall Street looters who bankrolled his campaign wanted. No accountablility for ANY of the banksters. Instead, bailouts and bonuses, at government expense. The government socilized the real and enormous losses, while the Wall Street thieves got to keep, and even increase, their phony profits. No real regulatory reform either, as Wall Street continues to play the same games as led to the crash. Obama appointed a bunch of one per cent, Wall Street insiders to run his economic program, and they did exactly what you would expect…gut all chance for reform, refuse to hold their friends accountable for their actions, bailed out the too big to fail crooks and left the little guys to suffer.
Bush tax cuts continued. Meanwhile, he has put “entitlements,” which are the only thing standing between millions of Amercans and dire poverty, if not outright hunger and malnutrition, on the table.
On foreign and defense affairs, Obama has been an even worse disaster. He continued Bush’s war in Iraq and only withdrew under the terms of the Bush negotiated timetable. Sullian gives him credit for not leaving troops behind, but he tried to do just that, and only the intrasigence of the Iraqi government stopped him. Meanwhile, we are still leaving behind thousands of “embassy guards” and “private security contactors.” Obama “surged” in Afghanistan, killing thousands of civilians. He has dragged Pakistan into the war. He has greatly increased drone attacks, killing more countless civilians. He participated in the Libya intervention, without so much as a by your leave to Congress. Obama has expanded the Bush “War on Terror” to a dozen or more countries. Right now, US Special Forces and drones are raining death and destruction across a wide swath of Africa and the Middle East. Belligerance towards Iran continues and is even increased. No real cuts planned for the Military Industrial Complex planned, ever.
Obama expanded and extended the Patriot Act. He claims the right to kill American citizens outside the USA on the basis of a simple, unappealable, secret determination by himself that the person is an “enemy combatant,” a term unknown in international law. So much for due process. Torture has NOT been discontinued. Rather, it’s been farmed out to “allies.” Or, just as likley, it is continuing behind closed doors in the numerous international archipelago of secret, American-run gulags scattered across the world. Contra to his clear promise, he has not shut down Guantanamo. Full speed ahead on military tribunals, kangaroo courts in which even if the accused “wins,” he can still be detained forever. Speaking of which, Obama has signed into law the provisions authorizing the President to indefinitely detain American citizens in the USA. And he claimed that authority even before the law explicitly permitting it was passed. State secrets. And has refused to prosecute the torturers and illegal wiretappers.
Obama has been a neo liberal when it comes to economics and a neo conservative when it comes to foregin policy, defense and the National Security State. Basically, he is a smarter, hipper, more stylish version of Bush.
I’d say the cover blurb has you pegged pretty well. Your knee-jerk recitation of Firebaggerly Correct Ideology does not refute the points and plain facts in Sullivan’s article. It’s also boring. Like there aren’t armies of knee-jerkers babbling the same thing all over the Web. It’s old, it’s tired, it’s self-defeating, and I don’t need it here. Good-bye.
freemansfarm is soooooo right!
Why, Barack Hussein Obama, our first black President, and a Democratic one at that, should have done the following:
-Snapped his fingers and fixed the economy.
-Thrown the mostly rich white Banksters and financiers in jail,
-Increased taxes on the wealthy by himself.
-Took us out of Iraq and Afghanistan immediately.
-Closed down Gitmo, no matter what Congress had to do with keeping it open.
-Began dismantled our Military Industrial Complex.
-Immediately closed Homeland Security.
-And returned this country back to a time when the government was never in any way at all intrusive on people (which was never, btw).
I mean, why didn’t he do all of that?
By his DAMN self!
Huh?
Answer me THAT!
Because he’s just “a smarter, hipper, more stylish version of Bush.”
OY!
I have a question freeemansfarm – do you also play an idiot on television?
freemansfarm could go back to the Constitution, just for beginners. You know, where it enumerates the powers of the various parts of government. Bah.
I must agree with cund’s first post – most of us have been saying THIS all along. AND, short-sightedness seems to be an affliction of those mired in their ideologies.
He claims the right to kill American citizens outside the USA on the basis of a simple, unappealable, secret determination by himself that the person is an “enemy combatant,†a term unknown in international law.
I’ve never heard of Obama claiming any such right, so, in the interest of making sure I have the facts, this would require citations.
Torture has NOT been discontinued. Rather, it’s been farmed out to “allies.â€
Again, no citations are provided to ensure that we have the facts. Perhaps this is why:
Or, just as likley, it is continuing behind closed doors in the numerous international archipelago of secret, American-run gulags scattered across the world.
It’s all paranoid speculation. I’m waiting for the paragraph on Area 51.
So, the firebaggers fault President Obama for not crowning himself king, and Republicans carp that he has highhandedly granted himself kingly powers.
I find it exceedingly strange that everything is always Obama’s fault. It’s almost as if these folks believe the Legislative and Judicial branches have no power whatsoever.
On top of that, we read that Obama didn’t even try to (close Gitmo; end the Bush tax cuts; save the public option) and that not doing those things was his plan all along.
It’s an interesting analysis, and I’d like to know what you think of it.
I’d say the cover blurb has you pegged pretty well
It’s old, it’s tired, it’s self-defeating, and I don’t need it here. Good-bye.
You forgot to add that only those who agree need respond.
Calling people with a different viewpoint names is always a successful way of modifying their opinions.
No, I forgot to request that people don’t copy and paste the same old same old from FireDogLake. Think for yourself.
jamie,
Before you go, reread what freeemansfarm said, and you show me an original point.
Those are the same talking points that Glenn and Jane use. Jesus H. Christ on an endless replay loop, we’ve ALL heard them a thousand times before.
And the kicker is, his idiotic last line about Obama being ‘a smarter, hipper, more stylish version of Bush.’
Yes, because Bush wanted health care, equal pay for women, and delayed killing bin Laden, and ending DADT, so that Obama could get credit for that.
Comparing Obama to Bush is idiotic. I-D-I-O-T-I-C!
They belong to the same genus and species. And there, pretty much, the similarity ends.
“It’s an interesting analysis, and I’d like to know what you think of it”
I think he is spot on. President Obama is not a sloganeer, he seems to me to be somewhat of a task master. Hard to fit on a bumper sticker and virtually impossible for a dimwitted teabagger or an Occupy lefty to appreciate.
It seemed pretty apparent, early on that Obama was playing the long game, and Sullivan describes it pretty well. Others might describe it as giving the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves and then move in.
My problem is that this is the only game Obama knows how to play. It’s appropriate in certain circumstances but not in others, but to have that as the only tool in your toolbox is extremely limiting. It’s like a chess player who only knows one opening move, or who only knows one basic way to checkmate. Many missed opportunities and much ground ceded, unnecessarily. And Obama’s phillosophy is “moderate liberalism”? Maybe, but it so waters down the term liberalism to be almost meaningless.
Somewhat related, see Ten Reasons Why the US is no Longer the Land of the Free. A nice tidy list of Bush era excesses – limited to one specific category, civil liberties (doesn’t even consider banking and finance) – that have yet to be rolled back. And just wait until President Santorum (or whoever gets in from the Dark Side) in 2016.
There just comes a realization that whatever game Obama is playing, it’s just not enough. Life is not graded on the curve.
I believe Sullivan has some worth here, but the total view has to be more mixed. I do decidedly NOT want to put freemansfarm up in some insane version of ‘balanced’, either, but it does seem at least a few of his (?) points are at least as well-grounded in fact. It’s just not a binary world.
We have wins, and we have losses. Or at least not-yet-wins. And the wheel is still in spin. I kinda like the notion of take your profits where they appear, and keep trying. Which is what, more or less, Sullivan says. freemansfarm serves to keep the list of accounts still outstanding, if nothing else. The net of it all is several magnitudes better than having Sara Dearest anywhere near the discussion.
What I *would* like is for Obama to more often get to the point of demonstrating fire. My guess is that he reserves that for the campaign season, possibly calculating that it does tend to reduce options for bipartisanship. Whatever that is in these latter days. Frankly I want to see Mitch and John reduced to sputtering a lot more often. For many of us (I’m supposing), that direct response thing is a sort of sorely-needed booster shot for the “Yes We Can” vaccination from four years ago.
He has a point as far as the Wall Street crowd is concerned, but IMO the rest of the comment is pure hysteria that completely ignores the context of decisions.
Sullivan has a follow-up post (http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/01/why-obama-should-be-reelected.html) where he presents responses to his article. He mentions more than once: “I see that they have attacked it without actually, you know, reading it.”
I howled in laughter…only now he realizes that? You’ve been saying that for years to the conservatives who post here.
To be fair, some liberals have reacted the same (see freemansfarm), which is the primary audience Sullivan seems to be speaking to.
Oh…and he states he didn’t write the headline. I’d be curious if the headline was a bit more innocuous, if the responses would have been more informed.
naaaaah.
Article writers usually don’t write their own headlines, and they certainly don’t write the cover blurbs. Yeah, the rightie blogs I checked not only hadn’t read the article, they didn’t bother to link to it, either. They just took offense at the cover blurb.
OK – freemansfarm – If we all got together, we could all find decisions of this administration we disagree with. No big deal, I can cite two decisions of the FDR administration I disagree with. But we are in the year 2012, an election year. President Obama will be running against Mitt Romney, barring unlikely circumstances.
Who would you rather have making USSC nominations?
Whose tax policy is more regressive?
Who will defend health care for millions who will otherwise be without it?
Who will defend women’s rights? Gay rights?
Who is more likely to drag us into a war with Iran?
The race is not between Obama and the mythical figure in your mind. It’s between Obama and Romney. Quite likely, if Mittens prevails, Congress will fall, too. May I politely suggest you get your liberal head out of your liberal ass and notice the train on the way. All liberals are standing on the tracks. If you don’t freeking grow up pretty danm fast, you and your kind will put the most evil people imaginable in power. By the time they finish with voters rights and the Constitution, We the people may never have a voice again.
My personal way of analyzing my degree of satisfaction with President Obama’s performance:
1. What would things have been like with a President McCain?
2. What would have happened if the Democrats had stuck with President Obama?
3. What have the Republicans consistently tried to push past President Obama?
4. Remember the old saying that “Politics is the art of the possible.”
5. Appreciate Secretary of State Clinton.
6. Appreciate Jon Huntsman, despite his unfortunate Republicanism.
7. What have I done besided bitch? Letters to legislators? Donations? Shared information/articles?
8. Imagine a Republican win in 2012.
9. Imagine America in 2016, in light of #8.
I knew that Obama was a centrist when I voted for him. He’s much better than the competition, past and present, and he has achieved some amazing results against steep odds and partisan obstruction; but he has some unfinished business, and he has compromised badly on key issues.
So I say keep him, and keep pressing him. He’s good, but I want more.
re: @5:01 pm
Yeah, context does rule. Try to explain that to a drunken freeper… oh wait, you have. Still, I’ll argue that we do need to track our losses and shortcomings to keep our focus on progress. I’ll let freeboy help, without agreeing with it all his smoke.
paradoctor,
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – you want a more Liberal Obama?
Vote in a more Liberal Congress.
And NO RED DOGS!!!
I’m not going to be snarky to freemansfarm because I understand his frustration.
However,things don’t change over night;especially with the roadblocks and stiff arms Obama has had to deal with.
I think Sullivan is spot on, and I further think Obama will clean Romney’s clock in debate when that time arrives.
Obama ain’t perfect, but he is heads above all others in the Republican clown college.
Better a centrist than an a**hole (referring to his GOP rivals here).
While Obama’s election was historical and quite a surprise to many, he nonetheless has faced a criticism from so many different people that I believe his election was perhaps an accident. I am a retired Federal worker who spent 24 years in the Washington DC area. What I found is that it is a very hard world to make changes in. Obama has faced unprecedented obstructionism from Congress and yet he has accomplished more than he is given credit for. Thus, I think all those who sit in such high judgment of Obama need to take a listen to a song made famous in 1970 by Joe South:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoznjbKVnmw
‘Gulag and Bonnie,
‘Love your comments!
Obama ain’t perfect, but he is heads above all others in the Republican clown college.
You got that right. There’s nobody who comes near him. I think he’s done an excellent job considering all the resistance he’d had to face just to accomplish anything.
Despite my frustration, I think you have something here and the more I hear the more credible this idea of “doing the best with what he has to work with” becomes. I’m still scratching my head over how the middle seemed to move so far to the right while I was sleeping…and I didn’t even think I’d dozed off.
@Bonnie – I hear you when you tell us how ossified and resistant to change Washington DC has become; my beef with Obama is that he isn’t inclined to even try. And so the GOP pushes the country further and further to the right, and the Dems are ever more impotent to push back.
Obama is, in a sense, a real warrior. Not someone who likes to fight, or who likes warfare, but someone who assesses the situation and determines what will accomplish his objectives, if they can be accomplished… and someone who doesn’t waste time trying to accomplish things he knows will fail.
Such people will take a lot of heat from other people who aren’t as accomplished warriors, who are interested in the fighting or the glory, not the actual “achieve the goals” stuff.
I’m not saying he’s perfect – maybe he’s failed to accomplish some goals that he could have accomplished. And I certainly don’t agree with everything he’s done. But a lot of things that he couldn’t get done are things that I don’t think anyone could have done anything about. So, rather than wasting time and energy in pointless (albeit *glorious*!) battle, he’s done stuff that he could do.
And I’ll say again that a lot of things people think Obama should be doing are things that we, the people, should be doing.
I’m glad people are calling for prosecutions of the fraud that occurred during the run-up to the great recession… they should keep calling for that, and keep being angry about that, and be furious every time the Justice Department delivers a slap on the wrist and a “do it again, and we’ll slap the other wrist!” in cases of financial fraud. That there should be tough laws, and strong law enforcement, is something that we should be pushing, until the Republicans who swear that such “over-regulation” is “killing jobs” sound like they’re trying to help their buddies hide the bodies. (Which they are… but they don’t always sound that way.)
But it’s not up to Obama to generate that popular sentiment. That’s up to *us*. And then, if he’s a good politician, he’ll use that sentiment to accomplish something. But he won’t stick his neck out. No politician will.