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Apologetic Apologia

Posted: September 19, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Politics as Usual, Team Obama | Tags: , , , |36 Comments

I suppose I should be glad that I’m not hearing that stupid 11 dimensional chess explanation any more.  However, Bill Keller-who “stepped down” as Executive Editor of the NYT to return to writing still does a pretty good job of rehashing the same old lame excuses for why things are still so bad around the country. We still have Wars.  We still have unemployment.  We still have a terrible housing market.  Well, you don’t need me to run down the list, do you?

Keller meanders through the usual talking points of Obama apologia before he finally comes to the place where the buck should be stopping. I’m not sure how many times I can hear about inherited problems from Bush before I start shouting enough already!  The missteps since then have been so obvious that it’s hard to take the it could’ve been worse excuse as a justification. Here’s where the disappointed true believer almost comes clean; ALMOST. As he talks about the a President adrift, he still points to the usual White House talking point of poor messaging.  That’s a cop out.

Obama can be faulted for periods of passivity (his silence as Republicans have sought to defund financial reforms), for a naïve deference to Congress (his belated engagement in the details of the health care bill), for a deficit of boldness and passion, for not doing more to stiffen the spines of his caucus on Capitol Hill, for not understanding — at least until his latest barnstorming on the jobs bill — that governing these days is a permanent campaign.

It is partly a failure of presidential communications that Republicans have succeeded in parodying each of his accomplishments, turning “stimulus” into an expletive, portraying “Obamacare” as socialized medicine and attacking the Dodd-Frank financial reform as an assault on capitalism.

It’s not just that he has failed to own his successes. He has in a sense failed to define himself. He is one of our more elusive presidents, not deeply rooted in any place or movement. David Remnick’s biography called Obama a shape-shifter. At the fringes, that makes him vulnerable to conspiratorial slanders: he is a socialist, a foreign imposter, a jihadist, an adherent of black liberation theology. To a less paranoid audience, his affect comes across as aloofness or ambivalence.

Progressives get blamed for having set their expectations too high. Gee, you don’t think the press help boost those just a wee bit, Mr Keller?  Republicans get blamed for their intransigence. We all get blamed for not seeing the “real progress” in bank reform, health care, and his “approval” of the Get Bin Laden Mission.  Oh, and did we mention he stopped a Great Depression from happening with his stimulus?  See.  It’s a line up of the usual suspects, isn’t it?

I didn’t expect celestial choirs from the man but I did expect something more than the passage of the 1990s Republican Dolecare plan response to Clintoncare IF we had to go there.  I did expect a bold response to the unemployment situation right out of the box.  What we got was a half-assed stimulus plan full of republican style tax cuts at a time when the entire country needed, wanted, and voted for something DIFFERENT from the usual Republican la-ti-da. I expected a Democratic President with Democratic policies at the very least.   Frankly, if my expectations get any lower at this point, they’re going to be sitting on top of Mount Everest while my feet will still be planted not so firmly in the Louisiana Swamps.  Yes, Bill, I will not vote for Rick Perry under ANY circumstances. But then, I may not walk down Poland Avenue and pass the old barn for the fire horses into the current fire station to cast a vote.  That act–repeated enough times in the neighborhoods of America–could take down more than a few Democratic Senators and Reps and this President that never seems to rise to any occasion but a speech.

36 Comments on “Apologetic Apologia”

  1. paper doll's avatar paper doll says:
    September 19, 2011 at 1:11 pm

    Progressives get blamed for having set their expectations too high

    I’m real tried of the left getting taken to the wood shed, while the repugs are being hosted to a noisy cocktail party on the south lawn . All Obama has done for his base is wag a finger at them for expecting squat from him. If you know any thing about Obie, he treats those who actually care for him like shit and those that abandon him are treated like gods…it’s his never ceasing modus operandi

    • Branjor's avatar Branjor says:
      September 19, 2011 at 1:40 pm

      He must treat his wife and kids like……

      • paper doll's avatar paper doll says:
        September 19, 2011 at 4:13 pm

        Well he’s always alluding to MO’s tough treatment of him…which may be a joke.But it would be the only way to get any respect from him. If you treat him well, you are toast

  2. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 19, 2011 at 1:30 pm

    Great rant, Dak! The quote basically says Obama can be faulted for not doing anything a President needs to do. Therefore, he never should have been President and should step down.

  3. fiscalliberal's avatar fiscalliberal says:
    September 19, 2011 at 2:04 pm

    Todays speech should have been given two years ago. It was full of wide ranging options to the point that his supporters cannot focus one or two options. This then allows his opponents to pick at it with no one able to respond effectively.

    The real issue is that his supporters have no faith in his ability to focus and negotiate. I think Dak is right – people will just not take the time of vote. I think it is reasonable to expect a cut above George Bush the kid. Currently it is a open discussion as he has continues a lot of his policies.

    The polite discussion would say he is overwelmed. Fair analysis would say he is ill prepared and not very effective for those things he campaigned on.

    • Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
      September 19, 2011 at 2:50 pm

      This late in the game I don’t know how many people believe he can do it, when every time he meets with the GOP, they take all his marbles and offers up his large marble before seeing their offer, or simply gives them away.

      The base shouldn’t be asking him to hold firm to his Democratic principle, nor plead and beg him to fight. (((shaking head))) Either way we will get a DINO.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        September 19, 2011 at 3:27 pm

        I just want him gone. I want him to go away somewhere and do something that will never require me to see his face or hear his voice ever again.

      • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
        September 19, 2011 at 4:59 pm

        I haven’t listened to him for perhaps years — I don’t watch tv — so I don’t have to even listen to him during news breaks. His or her voice comes on the radio and I am the award winning channel changer.

        It’s that phony preacher man / lecturing — you know the preacher who is having affairs with half the congregation and preaches about faithfulness.

  4. Peggy Sue's avatar Peggy Sue says:
    September 19, 2011 at 2:23 pm

    I’m absolutely cynical enough to believe this sudden embrace of ‘taxing millionaires and billionaires,’ coining the term The Buffet Rule is an awareness of nose-diving approval numbers, calls for the classic LBJ moment and the disastrous elections in NY and Nevada. Obama and his frat boy WH crew have just noticed jobs might be a problem, that Plouffe’s prediction that no one would pay attention to the employment crisis in 2012 was dead wrong and that Wall Street is our Main Street slogan is not working.

    On the other hand listening to the GOP and Republican pundits squealing about Class Warfare is laughable.

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      September 19, 2011 at 3:29 pm

      The thing is that taxing millionnaires and billionnaires at 20% is actually a huge cut in the tax rates, since under Bush they were supposed to pay 35%. And that was already unconscionably low. So Obama is pretended to propose a tax increase while in actuality proposing a tax cut.

  5. northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
    September 19, 2011 at 2:25 pm

    Paul Ryan thinks working for free is a great idea — isn’t that something like slavery?

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/paul-ryan-supports-plan-let-unemployed-work-

  6. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    September 19, 2011 at 2:26 pm

    Stepping into the anthill: Is the Obama White House a hostile workplace for women?

    http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2011_09_18_archive.html#1868981291088954297

    • northwestrain's avatar northwestrain says:
      September 19, 2011 at 2:43 pm

      Oh that just couldn’t be — no no — don’t you remember that the 0bowma got da feminist’s stamp of approval — why MS Mag said so.

      Of course 0bowma is a male chauvinist pig and his wife isn’t a feminist either.

  7. Woman Voter's avatar Woman Voter says:
    September 19, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    I was busy with my building permit and missed President Obama’s speech, but did catch a commentary while driving on ‘NO specifics’. Anyone here specifics?

  8. pdgrey's avatar pdgrey says:
    September 19, 2011 at 3:37 pm

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rfuvDr2wJQ Hat tip/DCblogger. Please watch this video.

  9. mjames's avatar mjames says:
    September 19, 2011 at 3:47 pm

    This is getting truly unbearable. How can anyone believe a word this huckster says? Suddenly all is well, because he made some reference to not raising the Medicare-eligibility age? I’m stunned. It’s electioneering, that’s all it is. The jerk needs us to vote for him. So he changes his tune temporarily, sort of (but not really), in order to lure us back in. But he already put Social Security and Medicare on the table a long time ago, you know, those awful deficit-producing “entitlements.” He can’t take that back. He’s already done it with Cat Commission II. Anyone who falls for this in-your-face BS is a non-thinking idiot. Period. Those fools need to take the blinders off. Obama is a liar and a very bad one at that. Utterly transparent. A terrible politician who can’t even hide his lies. Unbearable.

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