A year ago, Barack Obama was a hero for Democrats. Now he's becoming a villain. Have the Democrats lost their minds?
The tenebrous story is recounted by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post, who notes that some liberals are even starting to join forces with the tea party to decry Obama over the confirmation of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. The decriers are also upset about Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, the administration's readiness to make concessions on health care, its failure to shutter Guantanamo, along with a host of other grievances. In their version of events, Obama is a feckless panderer, a traitor to liberalism whose conciliatory instincts have prompted him to capitulate to his opponents, time and again. His first term has become George W. Bush's third. And so on.
But is Obama really such a wimp? Or is he dealing with the harsh reality of: 1) the legacy of the Bush era; and 2) a divided Democratic party that has, in many ways, betrayed him?
It's hard to imagine that this is the health care plan that Obama envisioned during the campaign. Nor did he want to have to send tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan. But imagine the outcry had Obama begun to exit Afghanistan. He would have been the victim of a new stab-in-the-back legend on the right that might well have destroyed his presidency before it even had the chance to get off the ground. When it comes to health care, Congress will surely revisit it in coming years. Whether or not the bill contains a Medicare expansion, Obama is exactly right to say that it represents the biggest potential Democratic accomplishment since the establishment of Social Security. Little Joe Lieberman can pout and strut all he wants, but ultimately he'll be a mere footnote in the history of the bill.
The blunt fact is that Obama has been president for one measly year. Compared to the blunders that other presidents have committed early on, Obama is looking good. If the economy improves, he will look even better. So ignore the tedious and hypertrophied Obama bashers. And never forget that he is as as good and intelligent and decent a president as America will ever have. He still has a chance to become one of the greatest. Eight years from now, after Obama has successfully served two terms, that judgment may well look like a commonplace.
And yet it's awfully close to the Bachus plan where he worried so deeply about Olympia Snowe and not about the PO. I realize that there's some interpretation here but I agree with Feingold who thinks this is pretty much the plan that Obama wanted.
>> Nor did he want to have to send tens of thousands of troops to Afghanistan
HAVE to? I thought he decided to.
>>> He would have been the victim of a new stab-in-the-back legend on the right that might well have destroyed his presidency before it even had the chance to get off the ground.
Are we really supposed to be more concerned about his legacy than the morality of a war?
>>> And never forget that he is as as good and intelligent and decent a president as America will ever have. He still has a chance to become one of the greatest. Eight years from now, after Obama has successfully served two terms, that judgment may well look like a commonplace.
Wow. I liked him too whne I worked for him but this - we're in teenage girl adulatrion country here.
Why is everyone so eager to diss him? No, not I. I voted for him and will support him. I don't give up on my president in only his first year and prob never will. I know that things will work out for the better. How can some of you just say what you are saying. This is unbelievable.
They were right and Obama was wrong.
Now he is screwing up again with Health Care, instead of fighting and pushing he gave in on day one. He had massive support from the public and the most intelligent, competent professionals.
Instead Obama chose to listen to political corruption and he is wrong again.
You want the people of the US to follow you and Obama off a cliff by allowing the banking and insurance industries to continue to loot and pillage not only the US but the world. Not just of money, but with human suffering, torture and unjust death.
Big if.
Most economists are betting against it, you can't dig yourself out of a recession by printing money.
And as we're entering the twelfth month, things are getting worse, not better.
Coulda...Woulda...Shoulda...
Pres. Obama is trying to bring back the Clinton years (the DLC) minus the drama...
He failed to realize what has happened with Clinton and Bush...I mean, the severity of those years...
When you say 'America', mainly people are talking about the corporate aspect, the businesses that make it all happen for everybody else. Obama's just another guy who, for 4 years, gets to preside over the festivities. The fact that we have a rotating slot for our national leadership does tend to keep us at least abreast, if not above the foreign competition, but that's a keyword, competition, and people tend to forget that there's only 'forward', in the business of politics, which itself revolves around business, which revolves around money. It's all about money.
The government is controlled by people who believe we should spend billions and billions and billions of dollars to make the world "safe." They are rewarded for believing that. So, we are the world's policemen because we are proud, violent and imperialistic and scare everyone else in the world to death because he always have and we can.
The people and MSM are also very skeptical of change and our politicians' motivations. It's all you hear day after day. There's always someone out there criticizing everything all of the time.
One person, even the president, cannot overcome the momentum of all of that in a whole term, much less in just one year.
This man is realistic and honest and I think doing the best he can under extremely difficult circumstances. He's making some mistakes, but overall
Has there been a president in recent memory who has been popular? Unless you call the retrospective brainwashing job the GOPers and MSM did after Reagan, the answer to that is obvious.
I think we should give him a break.
Didn't expect him to overcome it all. The problem is that I see a half-hearted effort to overcome a lot of it. I see him siding up to the DLC Dems. It's not even the results so far - it's the clear TRENDS toward a very center-right Clintonian approach.
Health Care on the other hand is just a failure. Pure corporatism.
"And never forget that he is as as good and intelligent and decent a president as America will ever have."
I appreciate your op-ed, Mr. Heilbrunn, but 'op' is the operative word. The statement above is merely your opinion, and one that can only be based on 'want' and projected desire. You reveal more about yourself than you do the future.
One year is more than enough time, particularly in the fast-changing political landscape we now encounter, to assess where this president's head is at. The banking industry, Wall Street, healthcare and climate change -- each a fundamental element that affects all Americans profoundly -- and each revealing an Obama totally at odds with the mandate he created and by which he was elected.
That adjustments must be made between candidate and governing official is understandable, but Obama's volte face on so many critical issues is astonishing.
He certainly didn't campaign on a theme of let's bring all the insiders in (Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, Emanuel) and exile the free thinkers (*Goolsbee).
>> healthcare, and climate change
Comapre the campiagn trhetoric to teh effort and results on these two.
>>>really enjoy the policies and Supreme Court appointments of President Huckabee or Romney
From hope and change we have devolved into look how worse the new boogeymen are gonna be. That's sad.