Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

[NYC Liberal]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/20...itics.html

[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-top: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-right: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-radius: 0.3077em 0.3077em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #BFBFBF;"]The right calls him a socialist, the left says he sucks up to Wall Street, and independents think he's a wimp. Andrew Sullivan on how the president may just end up outsmarting them all.[div class="excerpt" style="border-left: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-bottom: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-right: 1px solid #BFBFBF; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3077em 0.3077em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #BFBFBF;"]You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not exactly unusual.

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

A caveat: I write this as an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on. I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture. I did not expect, or want, a messiah. I have one already, thank you very much. And there have been many times when I have disagreed with decisions Obama has made—to drop the Bowles-Simpson debt commission, to ignore the war crimes of the recent past, and to launch a war in Libya without Congress’s sanction, to cite three. But 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.

[nofurylike]

1. thank you for posting that, NYC Liberal!

i've only skimmed it, but it is extremely informative, and positive for President Obama!

[dennis4868]

2. Gread read!

It shou;d be required reading for all DUers but many of them will not like what Andrew has to say.

[MNBrewer]

5. Exactly!

"Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels," Sullivan writes. Yes, but no thanks to Obama, who opposes both marriage equality and marijuana legalization! This is the height of illegitimate Obama apologia: attributing to his credit policies he hasn't advanced because a change in public opinion happens to have coincided with his tenure. By this logic Bush also deserves credit for the increasing support for gay marriage during the aughts.