Unsurprisingly, I don’t agree with Peter Beinart on many details, but I agree with this:
One can argue about whether the bill the Senate passed will truly change the way Wall Street operates, but off the top of your head, can you name a more significant piece of progressive legislation signed by either of the last two Democratic presidents? Neither can I. And that goes for Obama’s stimulus package and his health-care reform as well. All of which means that, legislatively at least, Obama has exceeded in 18 months what Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter achieved in a combined 12 years. By summer’s end, he’ll also have shepherded two young liberal justices on to the Supreme Court.
Even as Republicans claim political momentum, the country is in the midst of a major shift leftward when it comes to the role of government.Even on the foreign-policy front, Obama has been meeting with success. He’s gotten Beijing to revalue its currency, which has been a goal of America’s China policy hands for several administrations now. He’s gotten China and Russia to back new United Nations sanctions against Iran, and he’s dramatically improved relations between Washington and Moscow, drawing Russia closer to the West and further from China, which once looked like its emerging strategic partner.
If anything, Beinart is underselling Obama’s foreign policy successes by not explicitly mentioning the agreement with Russia over the START treaty. And he’s right that the Wall Street Reforms alone surpass anything Carter or Clinton were able to do domestically. Clinton’s greatest domestic achievement was made in his first year. The Family and Medical Leave Act was Clinton’s best gift to the American people, but he mainly tinkered around the edges after that, and he, of course, set the stage for the economic meltdown with his deregulation of the banks.
Here’s where I differ from Beinart.
But even if Obama never manages another legislative victory, he’ll already have pulled off one of the most impressive opening acts in American political history. The question is why we’re paying so little attention.
The answer is that the media views policy through the lens of politics. Unless a policy victory brings political benefits—rising poll numbers, better prospects for the next elections—it is not treated as a big win. Thus, the Tea Party movement is considered an ominous sign for Obama, evidence that the country is turning against him. But the reason that the Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin crowd is so angry is that Obama has expanded the federal government’s relationship with the private sector in fundamental ways. In political terms, the Tea Party movement may be a sign of Obama’s weakened position, but in policy terms, it is a testament to his success.
I don’t think the problem is that the media is looking too much at poll numbers, nor do I think the Tea Party is evidence of Obama’s success. That’s not the problem. The Tea Party first emerged in the fall of 2008 in the form of Sarah Palin rallies. Prior to that, the Tea Party phenomenon was restricted to Ron Paul’s well-funded but poorly executed presidential campaign. As PUMAs emerged on the left, grizzlies emerged on the right, and Paul’s people came into the mix to create a toxic brew of racial and gender resentment mixed with libertarian economics and fringe paranoid conspiracy theories. This movement was in full force by inauguration day and hasn’t been much influenced by Obama’s successes or failures.
As for the media, they are driven by controversy. So, they’re simply more interested in airing the views of Republicans who disagree with the president’s policies and Democrats who are unhappy, than they are in spelling out the scope of Obama’s achievements. That’s not really that much of a problem because it’s not the media’s job to be a cheerleader for the government. They could be fairer and they could do better than this:
• ABC, This Week: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
• CBS, Face The Nation: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).
• CNN, State Of The Union: Afghan Ambassador to the United States Said Tayeb Jawab, Rep. John Boccieri (D-OH), Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA), Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO).
• Fox News Sunday: Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Kenneth Feinberg, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC).
• NBC, Meet The Press: Will not air, due to coverage of Wimbledon.
But, the administration doesn’t actually have a problem getting their message out through the media. The biggest problem for the administration is that once again the left is feeding on itself, unhappy with anything, and unwilling to give credit where it is due. The Republicans are causing immense frustration, and that frustration is getting aimed back at the administration because they’re the ones in charge and their the ones who have to make compromises on their promises to get anything done. It’d be nice if the Tea Partiers went away, or the Republicans developed schisms, or if the media were less biased. But it would also be nice if the left could ever overcome their habit of devouring their own. In the short-term, none of these things are going to happen though.
So, get ready for a beatdown in November. Still…each individual has the choice to be positive or negative, constructive or cynical. It’s all up to you.
Actually, I’m starting to sense a shift in the narrative that the media is telling. I don’t know why, but I get the feeling that the closer we get to the elections (or to Labor Day), the more that the Tea Party will be portrayed as fringe and extreme. And the more the stories will emerge as to how “in charge” Obama is.
Hope so, but I wouldn’t count on that happening. The MSM is probably praying for a wingnut congress, it’ll be more drama (and ratings) for them.
Wow Beinhart is a ray of sunshine. I think Obama has been a mixed bag. The stimulus led with the right idea and has kept our heads above water (so far). Its a very mixed bag itself more jobs and less tax relief would have been nice. Following with the healthcare bill was too costly politically. A better bill could have been passed at a later time and been more popular.
A jobs bill would have been his best option. Rather, our best option. Obama lost his political instincts and it cost us. Financial reform should refocus the party and be considered a decent progressive victory.
The Democrats need to go back and get the farking unemployment extension. If the bill has to be stripped bare then it does. When Schwartzeneger(sp?)makes his Ca. government work for the minimum wage make sure people know we tried to help the states and it was killed by Republicans.
The Repuglicans are a party of conservatives. The Democrats are not solely a party of liberals. That is why we eat our own. Its because usually they deserve it. Never the less I agree the Repugs need to be beaten in November at all costs. I mean at all costs! A do nothing government will bring 30% unemployment and social unrest.
All presidents are mixed bags really.
Grasping at straws are we Booman?
I guess the American people are just wrong on the issues.
health care 43/50 for/against
Obama job approval 47/46 approve/disapprove
(RCP ave)
Why the bad polls? While the government hands out trillions to the corporations, Obama is stalemated in Iraq (remember out in 16 months?), flummoxed in Afghanistan, ineffective against the oil spill and claims the jobs picture is improving when it’s getting worse.
46% of Americans did vote McCain/Palin
Only 29% of Americans voted Repub (the voter turnout was 63% of the electorate). Thirty-seven percent of the electorate voted “none of the above.”
Unless we figure out the jobs and flat to falling wages question really really fast a lot of this good can be undermined by fire-breathing right wing populism in the next couple of election cycles.
Booman, I’m NOT ready for a beat down, and refuse to see it as inevitable at this point. That, to me, is a MSM narrative based to some extent on polling, true, but it is a narrative in any event that is formed with blinders on.
I think there is instruction from the Democratic nomination campaign. I know this is the actual Presidency versus primary politics, but the media narrative then was cocksure and always, ALWAYS completely wrong. Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe were the guys looking at the entire game board with an unshakeable focus when no one else could be bothered.
You say “the administration doesn’t actually have a problem getting their message out through the media”, but that’s not exactly true. The MSM is, as always, reporting the horse-race surface of things without widening the view to include the totality of the situation. That’s where I agree with Beinart. And I think that you can see in the totality of the way Obama has run his administration a strategy of working in two year increments. He has, all along, been building TOWARDS the 2010 elections, with an eye on 2012. He may not have executed everything the way he wished, and in any presidency there are always wildcards such as the oil disaster in the Gulf, but he has had his eye on November, 2010 all along. For example, he chose to weather the 2009 Tea Party summer rather than to engage, and he ended up with a Health Care package along the contours of what he thought he’d get and is now entering a period in which the Tea Partiers are imploding everywhere you look. Stimulus was designed to kick in over two years rather than to be front loaded. Jobs: very dicey, but I can take heart in Bob Herbert’s column this morning in which he draws attention to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, one of the proven gems of the stimulus package.
My point is that Obama was ready on election day in the Iowa primaries, though he was in a position where almost any other politician would have panicked only weeks before. He and his team don’t seem to mind one bit being seen as dead in the water in the period leading up to an election since they always remember that the election is on election day–not on the Fourth of July.
Damn straight. At some point very soon, I’m going to have get up off my butt, go down to the local OFA place, and get back on the phones. I find phonebanking somewhat unpleasant – canvassing is much more fun IMO, but I’m in a deep blue part of California where the locals don’t need any convincing. So phones it is. Got to step back up to the plate again like we did 2-3 years ago.
“[Obama’s] gotten Beijing to revalue its currency, which has been a goal of America’s China policy hands for several administrations now. He’s gotten China and Russia to back new United Nations sanctions against Iran, and he’s dramatically improved relations between Washington and Moscow, drawing Russia closer to the West and further from China, which once looked like its emerging strategic partner.”
The Iran sanctions are toothless and the “dramatically improved relations” with China and Russia have just been hit by our diplomatically-challenged Secretary of State.
this just in:
This from a government that wantonly tortures and kills foreigners, and represses domestic opposition.
It’s not very smart to criticize China, the largest US banker, and Russia whose friendship has now and its “drawing Russia closer to the West” has now been jepoardized by the foolish spy arrests and this from Clinton (she’s done it before, also). Oh, Ethiopia is an ally against Somalia while Egypt has received tens of billions of US dollars to sustain its repression.
So Beinart is way off.
so, we’re supposed to allow spies to run free in our midst and never criticize violation of people’s civil liberties? That’s your progressive position?
It’s not enough to stop torturing people, we have to give up on finding it offensive, too?
Maybe you just want to find stuff to complain about.
These “spies”, from what we know, are a joke. On civil rights my progressive position is that the US ought to clean up its own act rather than unleash its diplomatically-challenged SoS on countries we ought to be on friendly terms with.
Clinton, in her short term in office, has hardly left a major country un-criticized. This looks particularly foolish to non-Americans, coming as it does from the international bad boy which has a policy of wanton killing and torture abroad.
good to know that the progressive position is to be silent on human and civil rights abuses and to let spies spy on us as long as they are not ‘serious’ spies. It’s a good thing no one in power listens to you.
You listen to me, that’s something.
Don Bacon, you seem like a troll to me- or maybe it’s worse. Maybe you’re genuinely a liberal progressive or whatever you want to call yourself. You can’t understand that Obama is the best liberal President you’ve ever had, you can’t understand that although some of the policy hasn’t been the perfect solution, he has done so much more than any other democratic president for many many years (and yes, I include Carter and Clinton in that group). But no matter, you decide that it isn’t good enough and that’s sufficient for the republican overlords to come into power. I am not an American so it doesn’t affect me directly but you should know that you are shooting yourself in the foot here.
Well, I can understand why anyone who differs from the amen chorus might be called names by mentally lazy people. It’s much easier than dealing with facts. And while your concern for my health is laudable I will continue to deal with facts to the best of my ability.
Comparing Obama to other presidents is not only irrelevant but is actually detrimental to your claims at a time when the USA, from many angles, is in such a bad way. There is nothing to celebrate for too many Americans who are facing severe problems domestically while the government throws hundreds of billions of dollars at foreign entanglements. That’s not progressive, no matter what Mr. Beinart says.
What?! Obama isn’t anywhere NEAR liberal, and for you to use that term in the same sentence as Obama shows that you’re one of his FANS, not an objective watcher. Obama isn’t the best anything. He’s mediocre to terrible on every front.
Yes, if you take away the context of His election and the mandate that was bestowed upon Him, he’s been a marvelous president, father, and teacher. But when you add all the context and the mandate, He becomes befuddled, lackadaisical, stubborn, mean-spirited, and politically over His head.
You may keep looking at Obama in a context-free manner if you’d like, but you’re only deluding yourself.
He’s responding to your comments, not listening to you. If he was listening to you, he would be agreeing with what you’re saying.
But it’s good that you admit that you only post here for attention. Now hopefully you’ll realize that it’s not very healthy.
Fuck you.
We stopped torturing people? Near as I can tell it’s still going on, at Bagram and elsewhere. We just don’t brag about it any longer.
This is hardly an Obama problem, though. For 60 years the US has been lecturing other countries about human rights and democracy while we undermine same all over the world, whenever it suits our perceived national interests. The bipartisan DC consensus has long been that our own shit don’t stink. The fact that other countries usually see this as rank hypocrisy is nothing new, and I doubt other countries deluded themselves (as some progressives did here) that the US would somehow dramatically shift course under an Obama presidency.
But the fact remains that all of the worst national security initiatives of the Bush administrations – the two pointless wars (three, if you count Pakistan separately), the domestic spying, the torture – are at some level being continued under Obama 18 months in. And it’s fair to call him on that, even as we recognize the things he’s achieved.
What blows my mind is that this is exactly the sort of mix of good and awful that anyone paying attention in 2008 to the campaign and history of Obama should have expected. Somehow a significant percentage of the progressive left convinced themselves that Obama was a lucid variant on Kucinich. He’s not. Never has been, never will be, never said he would be. The sense of betrayal is palpable, and ludicrous. And people forget that a mix of good and awful is a massive upgrade over what came before, or the alternative on offer now.
The biggest problem for the administration is that once again the left is feeding on itself, unhappy with anything, and unwilling to give credit where it is due.
This kind of shit is what drives me crazy about you, Boo. Did you see the jobs number yesterday? JOBS!!!!! That’s why people are upset. If we had even 6.5% unemployment, do you think anyone would quibble with you? But we don’t. The official UE is 9.5% and likely much higher. That’s why people are upset. And that’s why, if anything, we might end up with Speaker Tan Man come January.
Sure jobs is a big issue, but realistically what can a president do, short of hiring people. The days of CETA are long gone. Can’t even get an extension of unemployment insurance, a certain stimulus (though sad). What the country needs is DEMAND for goods and services and that doesn’t come out of thin air. People are saving rather than spending. So though people will certainly question whether the administration is doing what it can (limited, for sure) to “create the climate for growth” (ie., lower taxes, low interest rates, etc.), nothing will happen until there is demand. And people should ask the republicans what they would do to create jobs. Their only solution so far is tax cuts. No business man will tell you that they will hire more because of tax cuts. Not one! The only reason to hire more is to meet demand.
The main problem is that Obama doesn’t get it.
recent news (Friday):
Obama, same day, referring to the BLS report:
Did you see this:
http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/2010/07/01/companies-clutching-cash-but-stingy-with-jobs/
From Forbes!! of all things. What does that tell you?
“Surely, what can the president do? He’s only the president.”
I love it when the fans throw that chum out into the water. Let me get clear with your premise: Obama went thru a bruising electoral process only to become a glorified secretary. He has no power. No influence. He’s just a lousy figurehead who gives delightful yet fallacious and empty speech after speech after speech.
If Obama would have listened to nonpolitical people and incorporated ideas outside of his corporate bubble, He’d be in less trouble. But Obama is always right (Oil Drilling Doesn’t Spill!), always perfect (“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!”, and ever the self-reverential narcissist.
No, the problem is not jobs. The problem is a splintered majority vs. a united opposition. The problem is higher motivation to vote on the right. And the reason we’re not motivated is because most of our opinion leaders and telling us everything sucks. We’re demoralizing ourselves and letting the Party of No strategy work brilliantly because we’re a bunch of cry babies.
Well, I agree with you on that, Boo. Just like your post about Huffington Post the other day. Whine, whine, whine about it “not being enough.” From reading their headlines (the non-sexual ones), you would think that the Dems were responsible for not passing an unemployment extension. Arianna herself is a big Obama critic. Gets her on TV, I guess. Meanwhile, it demoralizes a goodly part of the left.
I think that whatever Bush did, he was hardly ever criticized by the right. But the left doesn’t know how to support, only to complain.
I think that whatever Bush did, he was hardly ever criticized by the right. But the left doesn’t know how to support, only to complain.
Do you not understand anything about the differences between the left and the right? The those on the right that dare criticize their own get thrown off the wingnut welfare gravy train. And are you suggesting that the left has low expectations like the right? That’s pretty insulting. Watered down stimulus to please President’s Snowe and Collins? Check! Watered down Wall Street reform to please President Brown? Check!! Appointing a commission that wants to shred the Social Security safety net? Check!! Go ahead and call me shrill if you want. I really don’t care.
Shrill!
Give me a list of those “opinion leaders.” Of course the right is more motivated. Their guy isn’t in the White House. We’re not crybabies. We set our standards high. And lets face it. Do you really think the public at large gives a damn about a new START treaty? That’s not an issue people go to the polls on. And maybe things are great for you, but for a lot of unemployed people out there, things do suck.
The economy sucks. That’s not our guy’s fault. The oil spill sucks. That’s not his fault either. Even with his guidance of policy in Afghanistan and his caving to the fearmongers on some civil liberties, I consider him to be the best president already since FDR. Give him four terms and supermajorities in Congress, and he’ll do even better than Franklin. And, aside from a minority of bad Dems in Congress that limit what we can do, this is the most enlightened, progressive Congress in history. It’s true that we’ve seen more economically progressive Congresses, but they were also Jim Crow Congresses. I’ll take that trade. As piss-poor as they are, they’ve never been better.
The economy sucks. That’s not our guy’s fault.
No, but what is being done to make it better? Especially considering things like this:
http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/2010/07/01/companies-clutching-cash-but-stingy-with-jobs/
And don’t forget how wildly over-optimistic Romer and Co. were in thinking what the employment situation would be like.
well you’ve posted that link twice but it doesn’t make the point any stronger. Boo’s right – the problem isn’t jobs it’s the ridiculous so called progressive movement that shouts “it’s not enough” about everything that is proposed. It’s the mentality that equates a lesser of two evils problem with evil versus good but not enough (a clue: good but not enough in politics is NEVER the lesser evil).
Frankly as an English citizen who can’t vote in US elections, all you whiners just make me sick – sick to death of people who can’t take yes for an answer just because it isn’t said forcefully enough. You can all go and f**k off as far as I am concerned and I for one will welcome our Sarah Palin overlords.
Yes, Booman, it is “our guy’s” fault. Everything is, regardless of whether it started with him and regardless of whether it was an act of God (or BP, which thinks it’s the same thing).
People want results from the guy in charge, and they don’t much care about excuses like “the Republicans have gridlocked the Senate” or “the technology to clean up this spill does not exist.” Politics is about emotion far more than it is about logic. Even if Obama had responded perfectly to these crises – and he has not – they’d still be crises, and he and his party will still be held accountable. This is the whole rationale behind Republican obstructionism, and the only reason we’ve never seen obstructionism on this scale before is because we’ve never had a major party willing to see our country plunged into crisis simply for political advantage. Not because it’s an ineffective strategy.
Almost everyone I know is unemployed or scraping by on odd jobs. They saw money going to banks but not mortgage relief, and now they see the administration hawking deficit reduction rather than the stimulus the country desperately needs, and they see Dems just shrugging their shoulders over failure to get unemployment extension passed when they have the largest Congressional majority anyone’s had in years, and they’re pissed. The Republicans scare them, but that’s not who they’re pissed at. And we’ll never get any traction with voters like that if we keep insisting everything is wonderful without acknowledging the truth in some of their criticisms.
Bush/Cheney, set up by Reagan, Bush & Clinton in certain respects, left this country completely screwed. Defense contractor wars, saying F-U to the Geneva convention, raping the environment as climate science was screaming emergency, and as a parting gift, finishing the job of wrecking the economy. That’s what greeted Obama when he took office, and the residuals from those policies (such as the Cheney/BP oil catastrophe) keep rolling in.
The criticism from the Left has made it tougher but some of it has made the Congress better– I have no problem with that. What has to happen now, though, is a time out: it’s campaign season and we need to get as many people as possible on the same page again for four months. We should be talking about the beginning of a change of direction, some of which has been implemented in the past 18 months, with much more to come. Let the hard core criticism start raining on the guy at the top again on November 5th.
As Booman so often points out, consider what will happen to the country if the Republicans begin to take back more and more power. There would be nothing cleansing about it.
You’re using a slippery logic, Geov. I didn’t say that no one holds the president responsible for economic or environmental conditions. I said that they shouldn’t hold him responsible for them because he didn’t create them and he has not been given a free hand to fix them.
I didn’t say that underemployed people aren’t pissed off; I said they’re pissed off at the wrong people.
I didn’t say the left should be satisfied, but that they should realize it’s July and its time to circle the wagons and make our case for what we’ve accomplished and for who is to blame for what we have not.
Obama isn’t “our guy.” That’s tribal nonsense.
And why is the majority splintered, Boo?
Maybe one good reason is that Obama keeps spitting on his constituency to aggrandize himself to his superiors. It’s called triangulation, something that he promised he wouldn’t during the campaign.
You choose to blame us, just like Obama does each and every day. If only we’d see the forest for the lovely trees and just see Obama as the amalgamation of goodness, honesty, trust, and sugar and spice, we’d maintain our majorities in Nov. We’re the problem. Let’s not look at the president and his right-wing policies; they are all just distractions.
Obama is always unassailable. It’s the peasants’ fault. Let them eat cake, indeed!
It’s not surprising that the so-called “left” doesn’t remember that the media told us Bush was a popular wartime President for 8 years in defiance of all polls, that they kept predicting the public would join them in revulsion against Clinton, that they treated John Kerry as a wimp and Al Gore as a liar while treating Bush as a tough straight shooter, that they erected monuments to Reagan and endlessly sold the myth of his popularity – if they remembered any of that, the “left” might apply some skepticism to the story that Obama is and has been in free-fall. But that would require some knowledge of history, some fortitude, and some political analysis more sophisticated than cable news, and our american left cannot rise to that level.
As a political force, the American “left” might be able to answer “Edward versus Jacob”, but that’s the top of the maturity level we can expect.
So what happened to the idea that it was okay to fight really hard on financial reform even if you lost because of the optics? Instead as usual we got anti-left stuff from the WH the majority of the time. Obama started betraying and undermining us since the instant he got in the house. There’s no faith in him because nothing he has done has moved the country leftward. Sotomayor and Kagan if she gets in, are pushes. The healthcare stuff is Romney Care, it enshrines right-wing ideology into the the base of the health care situation. Financial reform as well has done nothing to ameliorate the issues that caused the situation.
Again, even DRUM has noticed.
Obama has done little to fix things. You say it’s the Republican’s fault and so it is, but Obama has bowed to them eagerly every step of the way. And if he’s given you nothing to trust him on, why should you trust him?