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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPresident Obama: "There is no shortcut to politics, and there’s no shortcut to democracy.”
In the New Yorker, David Remnick, author of The Bridge: The Life & Rise of Barack Obama, has a 17,000 word report on a pre-Thanksgiving fundraising tour with President Obama:
When Obama leaves the White House, on January 20, 2017, he will write a memoir. Now, thats a slam dunk, the former Obama adviser David Axelrod told me. Andrew Wylie, a leading literary agent, said he thought that publishers would pay between seventeen and twenty million dollars for the bookthe most ever for a work of nonfictionand around twelve million for Michelle Obamas memoirs. (The First Lady has already started work on hers.) Obamas best friend, Marty Nesbitt, a Chicago businessman, told me that, important as the memoir might be to Obamas legacy and to his finances, I dont see him locked up in a room writing all the time. His capacity to crank stuff out is amazing. When he was writing his second book, he would say, Im gonna get up at seven and write this chapterand at nine well play golf. I would think no, its going to be a lot later, but he would knock on my door at nine and say, Lets go. Nesbitt thinks that Obama will work on issues such as human rights, education, and health and wellness. He was a local community organizer when he was young, he said. At the back end of his career, I see him as an international and national community organizer.
Yet no post-Presidential projecteven one as worthy as Ulysses S. Grants memoirs or Jimmy Carters efforts to eradicate the Guinea worm in Africacan overshadow what can be accomplished in the White House with the stroke of a pen or a phone call. And, after a miserable year, Obamas Presidency is on the clock. Hard as it has been to pass legislation since the Republicans took the House, in 2010, the coming year is a marker, the final interval before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming
The question is whether Obama will satisfy the standard he set for himself. His biggest early disappointment as President was being forced to recognize that his romantic vision of a post-partisan era, in which there are no red states or blue states, only the United States, was, in practical terms, a fantasy. It was a difficult fantasy to relinquish. The spirit of national conciliation was more than the rhetorical pixie dust of Obamas 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention, in Boston, which had brought him to delirious national attention. It was also an elemental component of his self-conception, his sense that he was uniquely suited to transcend ideology and the grubby battles of the day. Obama is defensive about this now. My speech in Boston was an aspirational speech, he said. It was not a description of our politics. It was a description of what I saw in the American people.
Obama walked toward the stage and, as he was announced, he mouthed the words: Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
Then it happened again: another heckler broke into Obamas speech. A man in the balcony repeatedly shouted out, Executive order!, demanding that the President bypass Congress with more unilateral actions. Obama listened with odd indulgence. Finally, he said, Im going to actually pause on this issue, because a lot of people have been saying this lately on every problem, which is just, Sign an executive order and we can pretty much do anything and basically nullify Congress.
Many in the crowd applauded their approval. Yes! Nullify it! Although Obama has infuriated the right with relatively modest executive orders on gun control and some stronger ones on climate change, he has issued the fewest of any modern President, except George H. W. Bush.
Wait, wait, wait, Obama said. Before everybody starts clapping, thats not how it works. Weve got this Constitution, weve got this whole thing about separation of powers. So there is no shortcut to politics, and theres no shortcut to democracy. The applause was hardly ecstatic. Everyone knew what he meant. The promises in the second inaugural could be a long time coming
.
Obama has every right to claim a long list of victories since he took office: ending two wars; an economic rescue, no matter how imperfect; strong Supreme Court nominations; a lack of major scandal; essential support for an epochal advance in the civil rights of gays and lesbians; more progressive executive orders on climate change, gun control, and the end of torture; and, yes, health-care reform. But, no matter what ones politics, and however one weighs the arguments of his critics, both partisan and principled, one has to wonder about any Presidents capacity to make these decisions amid a thousand uncertainties, so many of which are matters of life and death, survival and extinction.
I have strengths and I have weaknesses, like every President, like every person, Obama said. I do think one of my strengths is temperament. I am comfortable with complexity, and I think Im pretty good at keeping my moral compass while recognizing that I am a product of original sin. And every morning and every night Im taking measure of my actions against the options and possibilities available to me, understanding that there are going to be mistakes that I make and my team makes and that America makes; understanding that there are going to be limits to the good we can do and the bad that we can prevent, and that theres going to be tragedy out there and, by occupying this office, I am part of that tragedy occasionally, but that if I am doing my very best and basing my decisions on the core values and ideals that I was brought up with and that I think are pretty consistent with those of most Americans, that at the end of the day things will be better rather than worse.
MORE:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-Barack-Obama-Vintage/dp/037570230X/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bridge-Barack-Obama-Vintage/dp/037570230X/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
valerief
(53,235 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)After that politics won't matter so much in the USA thankfully, that burden will be lifted from us and we can all get down to the serious business of adequately praising our economic betters, the job creators.
The large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
Autumn
(45,026 posts)NSA, TPP, Drones......
Hutzpa
(11,461 posts)any of NSA, TPP, Drones..... then you really have not been paying attention.
We are completely and utterly screwed.
Autumn
(45,026 posts)is any President going to change this. We are well passed utterly screwed.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)is just an invitation for the "haters" (not my term, but DUs) to come and post their one-line diatribes. They won't read the 18 pages, or even 2 pages: they only read headers, and then respond with slogans.
It frankly doesn't bother me anymore. They are not comfortable with complexity, so I realize there's no point in offering complex thoughts about a complex world or complex individuals to them. Their loss, I guess.
cali
(114,904 posts)Somehow I don't think you've read it.
And the people who have no use for complexity or ambiguity are the adorers who refuse to really grapple with this presidency or those who don't seem to grasp this complex tidbit: A good man is not automatically a good president. Going further than that, I think it's fair to posit that our system is now so hopelessly corrupt that it taints whoever is President.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)frazzled
(18,402 posts)And yes, I read all 18 pages yesterday, and I also thought it was good.
That does not change my view of the sloganeers. And I am not an "adorer": as I said, I appreciate complexity. Where I see "adorers" is in those who use the term even as they participate in the cult of personality with any parvenu du jour who utters a sentence with which they momentarily agree. No, let me put it more bluntly, for those who might not enjoy complexity: I see it every day when people post fundraising emails as if they were policy statements or accomplishments of state--failing to mention the "Donate" button at the bottom. (I get all these same fundraising emails every day, too, so I find it amusing.) These are the untested heroes worshiped here at DU. Which would be okay, if these easy words were acknowledged as merely aspirational and contrasted with the real-world complexities and agonies that face actual leaders grappling with a world that has no Donate button at the bottom.
riqster
(13,986 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)How about ~that~ broad brush?
struggle4progress
(118,270 posts)Hutzpa
(11,461 posts)Last edited Mon Jan 20, 2014, 02:23 PM - Edit history (1)
it is just as hard fighting for Peace as you would fighting wars.
Fighting for Peace is much more complex than fighting an open war which majority of people on our side
don't understand or do not want to comprehend.
It will take someone of great character complexity (someone who is seem to be misunderstood but gets the job done) to undo this cacophony that has been created by republicans with the help of some democrats, that has stagnated this country's progress.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)and elections--why else would they claim that if a candidate gets X% of the vote that means they represent X% of the people? it's not like they'd admit to a duopoly!