How Barack Obama undermined the Obama presidency

[kpete]

How Barack Obama undermined the Obama presidency
by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 12/21/2009 09:03:00 AM
NOTE FROM JOHN: Read this essay that Joe links to. I've not ready anything so spot on about the President, and what makes him tick.

A post at Huffington Post by Drew Westen, the political psychologist/neuroscientist, is sure to cause a stir today. Westen has gained a reputation as one of those scholars as an expert on political communication. His work in 2008 is often compared to what George Lakoff did in 2004.

Today, Westen provides a brutal, but accurate, assessment of the Obama presidency. It's worth a read. But have some coffee first, but you'll see things you've thought yourself over the past few months -- and you're going to be annoyed:
http://www.americablog.com/2009/12/how-barack-obama-undermined-obama.html

...........................

Drew Westen
Posted: December 20, 2009 09:34 PM

Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/leadership-obama-style-an_b_398813.html

[ixion]

1. Obama would be wise to take heed

despite what the DLC crowd around here is pushing.

[hayu_lol]

2. Obama is doing the same thing he did...

while engaged in Chicago politics. The same thing he did while in the US Senate, and continues to operate in the same detached mode in the White House.

Imagine that.

[mix]

3. Anecdotally, I am shocked how many young people

have soured on Obama after the passion and enthusiasm of his election (I work in education). Leaving this demographic behind will haunt him and the Democratic party.

[bvar22]

6. Think they are "disillusioned" now?

Wait until they are FORCED to BUY an invisible product every year from a For Profit Corporation that manufactures NOTHING and produces NO WEALTH with the IRS as their Collection Agency.

[Salviati]

4. double post

(this space intentionally left blank)

[Salviati]

5. While I agree with a lot of what this article says...

I still think that there is time for Obama to pull out of this. He's only a year into this term, he's got time left. He needs to learn from his mistakes though, to not put bipartisanship before good policy, to not reject good policy because it comes from a particular ideology, and lastly to put good policy above good politics. When it comes down to it, good policy is good politics in the long run, it's what brings in new voters and keeps them in the party for the long haul. If you can get that done while working with your opponents, then it makes you look magnanimous, if you have to do it while drubbing your opponents and making them look like out of touch obstructionists, that's good too...

[laughingliberal]

8. He does have time to pull out of it but it will, as you say, require enacting good policy

And I am skeptical he is, in actuality, in favor of good policy. It would require standing up to the corporate greed and making some FDR style changes. I've seen no evidence he supports that approach. It is also now a big leap after selling out the legislation which could have had a far reaching positive effect on the people of the country for a plan which will have far-reaching negative implications for years to come.

[Vidar]

9. Yes, he could pull out of it, but that would involve firing his crooked friends

an acting for the good of his electorate, which he seems loathe to do.

[mix]

10. I am astonished as well at how visionless his administration is,

little conception of the public weal.

[Salviati]

11. That's absolutely true

If he wants to turn this around, he's going to have to do some housecleaning and soul searching as to what type of president he actually wants to be. Does he want to go down in history as the first african american president, or as a great president?

[laughingliberal]

7. It's all right there. The future seeds of the destruction of the party

The most damaging aspect of the whole debacle is not even the demoralizing of the base or the turning off of the center. It is squandering the chance to hold on to that new generation of voters who came out in huge numbers for him. I thought of this last week. Young people, generally, do not vote, do not see politics as affecting them. Capturing the imagination of that generation was an incredible opportunity. Had this presidency fulfilled its promises, the promises which got these voters to the polls, we would have had their votes for Democrats for years to come. Enacting or even fighting to enact a progressive populist agenda would have given them someone they believed in and would have shined a bigger spotlight on the worn out, mean-spirited politics of the Republicans. This recent sell out of HCR in the interest of passing any bill in order to claim victory has hurt him with the young voters and the left. These are the voters who would have been more impressed with a president willing to fight for his principles even if it had not resulted in a win. Had he waged a vigorous fight for the health care reform plan on which he campaigned and lost it would have highlighted the depravity of the Republicans AND the Blue Dogs and could actually have created the impetus to get the base and these new, young voters out in 2010 for another rout of the right wingers from our legislature. Had that happened the "not revisiting HCR for 20 more years" meme would have proven false. A ground swell of anger at those who obstructed our chance at meaningful reform would have sent the legislators back to the drawing board to pass real reform and another huge rout of the right and their ideals would have provided the motivation for the 'moderates' to think again about pissing this population off. Without his support the question of a public option still polled as popular with a majority of the population. With vigorous, hard hitting support from a popular president (because he still had political capital at the beginning of this debate) the poll numbers would have been so overwhelmingly favorable to the public option the legislators voting against it would have paid the political price. And his inattention to the matter not only drove away the 'pesky' left and the new, younger voter, but the center. Now what? He got a nice Republican style screwing of the middle class and working class for his efforts (sic) but he will take the fall for it. Most have heard of the sellout to Pharma orchestrated by the White House and protected against all attempts of the legislators to cut a better deal for the people. It likely a similar deal was cut with the insurance lobby. After all, Karen Igagni seemed pretty smug through the whole thing through the entire debate. We would think we scored a victory and questioning of her would be met with a smug smirk. The fix was in will be the conventional wisdom. He, somehow, managed to get a right wing style health care bill out without one Republican finger print on it. Oh, yeah, we not only screwed ourselves for the mid-term, we lost the opportunity to hold a group that would have been reliable Democratic voters for years to come had we appeared to have the strength of our convictions. Now, we get more decades of a disengaged electorate who stays home saying, "Ack, they're all a bucha crooks."

The apparent lack of political instinct over the last year, the selling out of the people to the banks, Wall Street, and now the health insurance industry has been beyond frustrating. I have difficulty believing a group of advisers that tapped into the pulse of the voters with such pinpoint accuracy in the campaign lost touch as soon as the inauguration was over. And there are really only two possible explanations for this. They either were incredibly stupid or this is exactly the outcome they wanted. The corporate takeover of the government with the enthusiastic cooperation of a Democratic White House and legislature suggests they see the voters as irrelevant. After all, those ESS machines are still out there and they can be used for whichever candidate is most friendly to the cause of those who hold the keys. Barring that, it is still possible that Rahm's philosophy that there is no base (and apparently no center) and that campaign contributions is all that matters may have prevailed. If so, that was "fucking stupid."