From Inside the Beltway: Don't listen to what I say - watch what I do
Last edited Fri Jan 31, 2014, 02:06 PM - Edit history (1)
Against my better judgment, I am going to make a few comments about the TPP and recent events. I have zero desire to get into any bitter battles over the literal truth of what is what. After all, we are in a political arena and the quest of discerning the truth about anything is often extremely difficult if not impossible.
President Obama is not stupid, so I do not believe he ever thought he could get Fast Track. Continuing down this thought train, why would he make seemingly positive remarks if it were not something he truly supported? Think about it. He is a Constitutional attorney, and he has to know the repercussions from implementing a piece of garbage such as this TPP Trade Agreement. Thus, we are back at the beginning, so why would he seemingly be pushing it? Perhaps because HE HAD TO - HE HAD NO POLITICAL AND/OR EXECUTIVE CHOICE.
So if either were the case, why would that be?
Scenario #1: The talks on this TPP started under George W. Bush*. There is a protocol long in place that when one is elected to the Presidency, important issues and events already in progress must be appropriately addressed. It is important that when a transfer of power happens at the Executive Level, that transfer does not create an instability in our institution. So imagine if this is the perspective from which we view this and a newly-elected President when learning of this monstrosity bluntly states he does not like the agreement and will be quashing it. One can easily predict all of the potential adverse repercussions from a move like that, so I will leave that statement as is.
Although the President of the United States, Barack Obama is also the infinite politician. His solution would be to play ball until he had to resolve the matter, and a great solution would be to allow the agreement to "die" a natural death. That is what Harry Reid is helping President Obama do.
This particular agreement may pull a "Lazarus" maneuver as time goes on, considering the level of support given to it by powerful corporations and some very wealthy players. But for now, the play is blocked! Hurray for the home team.
Scenario #2: Bill Clinton did an astounding amount of work to help Barack Obama get elected originally, and then to win re-election. I just assumed it was a down-payment toward President Obama reciprocating when Hillary ran in 2016. But considering the overall effort Bill Clinton exhibited (almost an overkill, really), I think there might have been another reason Clinton worked his posterior off for this man who had knocked his (Bill's) wife into a hairline-miss for the Oval Office: the Clinton Global Initiative. What a boon to that foundation should the TPP be implemented!
So after all that Bill Clinton did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, how could the newly-minted President be perceived as not supporting the TPP?
I cannot say I have seen him do too much to promote this Frankenstein of a trade agreement. He has, however, put on a wonderful show.
Don't listen to what I say, watch what I do because it is all in the political game - perhaps that is the rule of thumb now worth politically pondering.
Thoughts?
Sam
= new reply since forum marked as read
truly insightful and interesting concepts.
I had considered elements of Scenario #1 from a number of angles and it left me grumbling about what travesties were allowed to pass into thefog of time considering what the previous admin. did to this country. And I could find validity in each aspect of my imaginings.
I had never really developed anything as advanced as your Scenario #2 though I had wondered at the connection with the players. Your thoughts make a lot of sense... the connection I was exploring was that Bill was the NAFTA guy and it would appear that he likes this bigger, better, new and improved version but I wasn't clear what he would get out of it. But you do make some really good points here, bravo!
I will admit that I was wondering whether the president was "playing" a tune by saying all he was at liberty to reveal while hoping that Congress and voters would reject it for perhaps different reasons respectively but that he would let the process kill it. I can't imagine that he would put us in that set of shackles and totally destroy our sovereignty like that. I always figured that someone had a figurative gun to his head from the corporate sector and that was the motivation for his seemingly positive stance on such an egregious heap of rubbish. He's allowed some really bad policy into the federal register that I am really upset with but this TPP thing is just way too much. I don't know if I could stay in this country if that became law. Don't know where I'd go but I think I would have to renounce my citizenship.
I need to ponder these ideas for a day or so now, new material and a new perspective to consider.
Thanks for the food for thought!
...that perhaps there's a chance he's been consistently underestimated by his supporters, as well.
And you are correct in saying he would not be where he is were that not true.
I am not so sure he is playing 11 dimensional chess. I think he has instinctive reactions as to what he wants to do, definite ideas about what he is not going to do, and many other things simply fall into the middle. In any one of these 3 postures -- yes, I can -- not going to happen -- well, maybe -- he makes incredibly delicate, smooth moves to always make his demeanor and actions spotlighted in the best possible framing. And setting a political trap from time to time is not beneath his dignity. 
Although I don't agree with everything he has done, one unexpected thing he accomplished elicited a reaction from me I never would have expected (pure joy at listening to him announce bin Laden no longer walked on this earth), another position he took that surprised me was his dramatic move to the left in supporting gay marriage after so long taking such an obtuse stance on the matter, and another issue he embraced, offering the Chained CPI to Republicans in his original Grand Bargain literally infuriated me to the point I dropped some of the things I was doing to actively work against this proposal -- these 3 issues I use just as an example of Obama showing a capability and/or willingness to exit from Door #1, Door #2 or Door #3, whichever he perceives is the correct door for the issue of the day.
Thank you so much for your posts on this thread. You have really contributed some interesting points.
Sam
and I think many of us Dems have pondered both and even have a few theories of our own along with the two you postulate.
I wonder if we have focused too much on the "man" though and not those who got him into power. You mention Bill Clinton and that's maybe where we could find part of his backing and for Bill's own purposes now that he has his Clinton Global Initiative.
Obama was young when he ran so it's hard for me to see him as a brilliant politician in the way of JFK who came from a political family all the way back to his grandfather. I think we overlook that Obama's connections come from the Rockefeller or Ford Foundation...(sorry can't remember which one right now) where his mother was the beneficiary of grants and her son probably benefited from those connections as he grew older. His father was one of the chosen bright and promising students from Africa to come and study in the US. That money came from the Kennedy Foundation so there's a bit of connection there. But, it would be hard to believe that the Kennedys chose his father to produce Barack Obama...so no political grooming there until Ted and Caroline Kennedy latched onto him somewhere along the line.
Anyway, my ramble is that I think that Obama got where he did through good connections and lots of charm and certainly a great mind. But it's those who selected him to run that probably have and had much more influence than his own gifts as a politician. It's his backers that we might want to look at to try to understand why so many of us Democrats on the Left (I used to be a very mainstream Dem) expected more from him than he has delivered. He was to be the Democratic Hope (once again after Carter and Clinton) but he has seemed to be much more Reaganesque than we were led to believe. The Center for American Progress, The Nation and others seemed to push him as Left Left Leaning and not NeoLib and his being the first Black President some thought he would have a deep experience in the woes of this nation after the Bush years and the policies of Reagan that we couldn't seem to shake off. But, others of us also knew that his family background was far removed from the experiences of so many of our African Americans here in the states. So...his depth of experience about mainland US came from his mother and grandparents and not from personal experience. He grew up more of an International Kid of the Globe than a person who had gone through the rough and tumble of growing up in Georgia or Arkansas and making one's political way through those experiences.
Anyway, I don't know what Obama's core beliefs are. As David Remnick said to Charlie Rose in his interview about his New Yorker article about Obama... :"He travels light." This was in answer to Rose's question about who Obama was close to outside of his inner circle he's had since his Chicago days. Remnick was saying...there were few. So, we probably won't know whether its brilliant chess or poker he's playing or if he has handlers and advisers who do all the strategizing for him until the Presidential Historians do their work after his second term ends. 