Give Barack Obama a Break Redux Posted by Michael Cohen

Over at the New York Daily News today I expand a bit on my post from a few days ago on why the left needs to give Obama a break:

In the ordinary world of politics, last week might have seemed like a pretty good one for Barack Obama. Far-reaching financial reform legislation passed the Senate and headed to the President's desk. Add that to comprehensive health care reform (the lodestar of the left's domestic agenda), overhaul of the student lending program and an $800 billion stimulus measure, and the first 18 months of Obama's presidency are the most successful period of progressive legislative activity in more than four decades.

Yet even with this list of accomplishments, there is a growing sense of gloom and anger among the President's liberal supporters. 

Bob Kuttner of The American Prospect has accused the President of not governing like a progressive. Eric Alterman says most progressives would agree that Obama's presidency "has been a big disappointment." Enthusiasm among rank-and-file Democrats pales next to that of Republicans.

The left's litany of complaints will be familiar to regular readers of the liberal blogosphere. Obama didn't fight hard enough for a public option during the health care debate; he didn't push for a bigger stimulus; he's sat on his hands in the climate change debate; he's been too cautious on gay rights; he's adopted the fuzzy language of postpartisanship. In short, to liberals, Obama has been a "sellout."

This criticism is misdirected. It ignores the administration's significant accomplishments, but it also fails to take into account the significant institutional impediments that are thwarting Obama and, in, turn, a larger progressive agenda.

 You can read the whole thing here . .  (and no, I didn't choose the headline).

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It's interesting that we keep hearing so much talk about the inherent weakness of the Presidency these days, put forward as the latest explanation for Obama's lackluster, anti-progressive centrism.

We have just seen an example of how wrong that assessment is. For weeks we were faced with Republican obstruction and speechifying on unemployment insurance. Then Obama stepped into the arena; made a forceful speech, and ... presto, chango ... we had an extension the very next day. So much for the weakness of the presidency. When Obama makes up his mind to fight for something and puts on the gloves, no matter how daintily, he usually wins.

But clearly he doesn't like fights. He sees conflict as something unpleasant to run away from, rather than as an opportunity for dynamic and momentum-building victory. Republicans have served up "Make my day" moments for Obama over and over, and nine times out of ten, he walks away from the opportunity. No president has ever squandered such an amazing hand: a discredited opposition party in near ruins, with a pathetically shrunken congressional minority and a decimated intellectual bench, has been resurrected through the singular ineptitude of the Obama White House and its consistently clueless communications operation, which begins with the great mysterious sphinx that sits in the Oval Office chair.

The collection of vaudeville characters and cartoon voices who represent the public face of the Republican Party these days are like a low-hanging piñata wearing a dopey, clownish grin and an "I'm an idiot; hit me!" sign hung around its neck. Yet Barack Obama, like a wide-eyed and impressionable 4-year old at the party, has run screaming and turned these buffoons into the most potent political force in America. Every day one of these loony right ninnies - Palin, Steele, Beck, et al - steps up to compete for the clown-of-the-century award. And yet they continue to gain on Democrats. This isn't just a failure for the national Democratic Party; it's an insufferable humiliation for Democrats.

One of the key reasons Democrats gravitated toward Obama was the feeling that he was a once-in-a-generation communicator, who would have the ability to command the bully pulpit. Boy, did that ever turn out to be wrong! Everybody knows what the Republicans are for. But how many people in this country could identify a genuine "Obama agenda" or "Obama vision"? Since Obama and his crew of whiny, mumbling schlubs has refused to define such an agenda themselves, and forcefully defend it day after day, he has left vacuum that has been filled by the Glenn Becks of the world.

I don't think Obama even knows any more what side he's on. He put an early stake through the heart of his own administration when he panicked during the recession-haunted transition period, caved into the usual power brokers with their "team of rivals" nonsense, and hired a crew of uninspiring and dubious middle-of-the-road retreads to staff his administration, hardly a single one of whom enjoyed strong progressive support, and not one of whom had a reputation for exciting, visionary and innovative thinking. (Well, there was Van Jones. But he was ditched as soon as he generated a ripple of drama. We certainly could have used his strong and clear environmentalist voice during the oil gusher crisis.)

Obama made Hillary Clinton the Secretary of State, and she has been lackluster and incoherent; he made Bush old guard Defense Secretary Bob Gates the Secretary of Defense for the new hopey-changey era; he took Lawrence Summers fresh off making a bunch of progressive enemies at Harvard, and put him in charge of the financial team. Rahm Emanuel, infamous pro-corporate prick and scourge of the left, was made chief of staff. Was there a single appointee to the team who could make progressives sit up and say, "Yeah ... that's what I'm talking about?

Obama has also proved that so long as you are willing to set your sights low enough, you can rack up a string of legislative victories. Obama is a like a guy who is batting .302, based on a pile of bunt singles, but with an anemic slugging percentage. Not the worst player on the team, no doubt, but definitely trade bait after the all-star break.

This latest fiasco with Ms. Sherrod is all-too-typical. At the slightest whiff of a potential fuss from the right, the White House threw her under the bus. Then they passed the buck and blamed everybody else for their call. And this they call the Obama "paradox"? It's supposed to be some kind of big mystery that Obama is shedding supporters rapidly? When has such chicken-livered behavior ever served to inspire loyalty, fidelity and sacrifice in an army of supporters?

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