The debt limit deal has finally made me understand Obama’s motivation. For a while, I thought he was secretly a conservative, and didn’t fight for liberal values because he didn’t want them. But now I’ve realized that his actual motivation is just to get something done, no matter what it may be. He is clearly trying to be the president who solves all the big problems that have been around forever. He wants to have great headlines, and doesn’t care what the story after the headline is.
The first big problem he wanted to solve was health care reform. The whole way through the process, he was pushing to compromise at every step. What he really cared about was “Fixing Health Care”, which meant signing a law that did something about health insurance. What exactly that law did meant almost nothing to him, as long as it did something. He also had a preference for bipartisan support, which is why he agreed to anything the Republicans said would allow at least some of them to support the law. Since he had no principles or goals other than passing a law, no compromise was pushing things too far to be acceptable.
This whole spring and summer, Obama has been pushing for a “Big Deal on the Deficit”. Most liberals wondered why he didn’t push to have the debt limit extended the same way it always has been, as just an increase to the limit with no other policy included. He didn’t even try, which suggests he wasn’t interested. He clearly actually wanted to fix the deficit problem. Since his goal was a big deal on the deficit, he repeatedly gave the House Republicans anything they asked for. The deal didn’t fall apart until it became clear that there was nothing that the House Republicans and Senate Democrats would both support. Obama was clearly then unhappy that he wouldn’t get his big deal accomplished.
This is why Obama talks as though he supports liberal values, but folds every time the conservatives ask him to. His goal isn’t any particular policy, but rather the headline of accomplishing something big. His goal as president is to be the one who finally fixes the problems that everyone has complained about for decades. Getting things done is more important to him than what it is that he has done. He actually believes the liberal positions are better, he just prefers to sign a bad law that does something over fighting for something he actually believes in and not getting anything passed.
Looking over the past few presidential races, the next big problem he is likely to want to try fixing is entitlements, and particularly social security. Which almost certainly means that Obama is going to cut social security and Medicare. There is no other option that can be passed right now, and Obama has already clearly demonstrated that he will give up on any principle as long as it gets a law passed.
…Does this legislation actually accomplish something, or could it possibly make things worse?
And arguments that come down to “He’s not really a progressive!!!” are worth a bucket of warm spit. So what if he is or isn’t?
If he’s a finger-to-the-wind politician — and one can make a good argument for that — then it’s up to us to be the wind.
He cares about people with millions, and he cares about what Republicans and TV talking heads think of him.
I know it’s very hard for people to accept the following axiom, and so often we love to blame ourselves for the wrongs of others, but he’s just not that into you.
why does he get to be the finger?
Your promising hypothesis does lead to a chilling conclusion.
This does align with Elizabeth Drew’s suggestion that a lot of this is motivated politically rather than by policy.
He’s letting the other side define the “problems,” as in “the next big problem he is likely to want to try fixing is entitlements, and particularly social security.” SS and Medicare are not problems; they are working solutions to former problems. “Fixing” them by reducing their effectiveness is recreating those former problems to the extent of the reductions.
… maybe each individual battle isn’t a make-or-break moment? Maybe every choice isn’t between armageddon and ragnarok? Maybe “no drama” really is just that… no drama? Maybe each and every gesture doesn’t have to be perfectly executed ninjitsu? Maybe he sees things as a basketball player where each and every two point play, while important, sure, isn’t going to be the deciding factor?
What if the long hard slog is just really long, very hard, and simply a slog? What if the job really is about patience, attention to detail and simply trying your best?
And (dare I say it?) what if Obama is a mere human and he doesn’t have the green lanterns ring? What if he also doesn’t have Excalibur, the robe, the elder wand, pop rocks and Alfred the butler, nor did he save a bundle on car insurance?
Gasp.
Or…
…What if the one thing that the Tea Party and the left in general had in common was a seething impatience? What if their separate worldviews were, somehow, alike in their craving for definitive and declarative victory? What if, holy cow, absence of such crushing triumphs were, for both ends of the political spectrum, evidence of wholesale and hopeless defeat?? Well, I daresay, in that case incremental progress would be worse than defeat, it would be termed betrayal…
Yeah, the Left that wants to replicate stuff that works quite well in other advanced economies — thank you very much, and the Tea Party with an incoherent platform based on pure fantasy, refuted economic nostrums, and an eagerness for pain, yes, those two are symmetrically arranged.
On psychology, petr is right. The inability to declare a qualified victory and move on is definitely shared by both sides.
I don’t think petr believes or implied any other equivalence.
I’ve had a theme bouncing around my head: “Tea Party = Conservative Political Correctness” … all about rigid ideology, victimhood, recrimination, group identity, orthodoxy, jargon, anti-intellectualism, the primacy of struggle, virtue and righteousness over getting what you want. Shaped, of course, by being at a liberal college in the early 90s — the same experiences that shaped Michelle Malkin! Shoot, maybe it’s a book.
And remember when all those wild-eyed PC-nik feminazis got elected to Congress? Ah yeah, those were the days…
Carry on.
The dissatisfaction on BMG is not with the result from this latest manufactured crisis, it is with a whole series of actions and inactions by the president, and a perceived gap between his campaign and the reality of his government. I note, incidentally, a sharp contrast with generally strong support for Governor Patrick who, even though not every decision he has made has been universally endorsed here, is in general strongly supported, and who won a difficult re-election campaign in part with help from this base. The broader topic under discussion here, of course, is whether Obama can win re-election.
Patrick, not coincidentally, has a much more cooperative legislative branch with similar priorities, with which he can actually get something done. That bad old one-party rule is lookin’ damn good right about now.
Obama had a congressional majority and, for a period, 60 votes in the senate. He managed to do little with them, certainly less than what Patrick’s done in Massachusetts, despite the tremendous power of the the Speaker and Senate President.
If having the same party in charge of both chambers is beneficial to the executive in the same party, Obama got far less done, despite having a far more powerful position and a whole lot more bully pulpit to work with, than Governor Patrick.
Furthermore, Governor Patrick doesn’t use the language of the right and hasn’t abandoned the most important issue — jobs — to be Mr. Austerity Man, despite the fact that Patrick had to deal with a budget constrained by the fact that it actually has to be balanced, and there’s fewer maneuvers for the Governor to get past a recalcitrant legislature in Massachusetts.
Barack Obama could have had the US Treasury issue a couple trillion dollar coins and immediately solved our manufactured debt crisis — but like all of his tools to combat the batshit crazy on the right, not only won’t he use them — or even threaten to use them — but he always takes these kinds of options right off the table.
However we want to explain the general stink of the job performance of one Mr. Barack H(oover?) Obama, this fact is indisputable: He is unwilling to do things in anyway other than how the Republicans tell him how to do them. He’s not even willing to fight them, even when the fate of this entire country is on the balance, including our very own lives. All he is willing to do is give in.
Finally, instead of continually denigrating his base, Patrick is thankful for it, and usually fights for it. Obama, on the other hand, calls it “the professional left,” demeans it, bemoans it and generally finds us intolerable when we actually dare to speak. It’s more than clear that we aren’t his peeps, and that in fact we’re the only people he’s not willing to tolerate or compromise with.
First, there are many areas on which the Governor and the legislative leadership do not see eye to eye despite being in the same party. Second, and more substantively, Obama, as noted, didn’t get much done, relative to his campaign rhetoric, even when Democrats did control Congress.
Yeah, and by “the left” I think you mean, the crazy extreme libertarian left, not the easy-does-it-cheech-and-chong-Catholic-Ramparts left. There is very little difference, policy-wise, results-wise, and action-wise, between the Tea Party and the Libertarian left. The things they disagree about, like gay marriage and country music and NASCAR, they just agree to disagree about, while they unite against elitist government know it alls who might stop them from doing whatever they want to do.
I for a long time thought (c) conservative. Since conservatives have the money and power, Obama’s motivation could as easily be driven by their resources as by any philosophy or policy preference. Some people just like to be on the winning side regardless of what that is. It seems plausible that powerful financial players figured that out about Obama when they gave generously to his primary campaign, in spite of his underdog status.
I don’t think the difference between (c) and (d) matters much in a practical way. Obama has governed as a conservative, especially regarding his protection of business interests. Even his health care bill took care of hospitals and big pharma, quite possibly at the expense of the public option. Regardless of his motivations, he will only favor ordinary citizens over big business if he is presented with serious credible threats or if the decision can be easily nullified later.
Everybody is missing that the debt fight is a bad deal for Democrats, they are on the unpopular side of the issue.
You can’t just sail out some fifty cent slogan or self-serving explanation on dailykos and then expect that it’s going to sell in America. “The corporate jets and the yachts” or some other bullshit.
That’s the problem with the internet. You guys get yourselves all worked up in the echo chamber and then you can’t understand it when Obama can’t think the way you do, so obviously he’s evil or a wimp or a corporate tool… Obama has to live outside the echo chamber!
Without spending the time to go into arguing every point in this post, I will focus on his criticism of Obama on Healthcare. The claim made in the post is that Obama cared only about passing something historic, this is false. I was an intern at the DNC during the health care debate tasked with reading every letter sent into the white house suggesting certain policies. My job was to flag letters that touched upon 3 goals because those were the 3 goals that Obama wanted HC reform to achieve.
1. Cover 30million Americans (ACA does this)
2. End Insurance bad practices, patient’s bill of rights (ACA does this)
3. Bend the Cost Curve down (ACA does this)
Everything else was just symbolic, he didn’t want to fight WWIII over the public option because it was only about winning a political fight and not a big deal on achieving those 3 goals.
On the debt limit debate he secured a compromise that cuts no money from this years budget and forces a bi-partisan commission to come up with reasonable cuts otherwise the money will come from the military and from medicare providers (key point, providers, insurance companies, not seniors). He may not have gotten revenue enhancement in this deal, but he doesn’t have to sign an extension of the bush tax cuts either so now he gets to fight that battle not with Default as a backdrop, but with a stronger bargaining position.
The reality is that Obama is a poker player, and a conservative one at that. He will let the republicans bluff and win small pots over and over and wait until he has the cards before busting them…but it will happen.
No Democratic President since LBJ and FDR have achieved as many of their goals as Barack Obama and liberal anxiety over his position is much more about liberals wanting to beat republicans then about good policy.
Like I said…before you accept a thesis, check the premise.