Barack Obama: deeply flawed, and it's our job to make him better

By Kathy G.

One thing before I get to anything else -- if you're as disgusted as I am by the way Barack Obama and the rest of the Dems folded like a cheap camera on the FISA issue, do something positive about it -- donate money to Georgia state senator Regina Thomas. Thomas is an African-American who is running in the July 15th Democratic primary for Congress in Georgia's 12th district against the reactionary, pro-war, anti-inheritance tax, anti-immigrant, pro-telecom immunity incumbent, John Barrow. Thomas has sterling progressive credentials and given the fact that she's running against a conservative white man in a Democratic primary where 70% of voters are African-American, a lot of people think she has an excellent shot at winning.

Bloggers such as Digby, Matt Stoller, and the crew at Firedoglake have already come out in support of Thomas.   

To donate money to Regina Thomas via ActBlue, click here.

Now, on to the main subject of this post -- if you're a liberal Obama supporter, this past week or so has sucked pretty hard. We've seen Obama move sharply to the right on a number of fronts, including:

--  hiring the centrist, pro-Walmart economist Jason Furman as his economic policy director (and yes, I know that Furman's done good work on issues like Social Security privatization, but if you're truly committed to a progressive economic vision, he's not the guy you'd be hiring);

-- naming, as his campaign chief of staff, Jim Messina, who served as chief of staff to Max Baucus, and who appears to strongly support Baucus's pro-corporate agenda;

--  forming a Working Group on National Security that consists mainly of reanimated corpses from the 80s and 90s (Warren Christopher, Sam Nunn, David Boren, Madeleine Albright) rather than fresh, bold new thinkers like Samantha Power;

-- making statements that are strongly supportive of NAFTA and that conflict with his position during the primaries (Obama is now saying he won't unilaterally re-open NAFTA);

--  releasing a campaign ad, his first of the general election, which hits on right-wing rather than progressive themes (it emphasizes "cutting taxes" and "moving people from welfare to work" -- why not "universal health care" and "getting the hell out of Iraq"?);

-- and, finally, throwing his weight behind the FISA "compromise," which deservedly earned him Atrios's dreaded "wanker of the day" award.

I've gotta say, though -- all this was utterly predictable. It's not that only that, once the general election campaign starts, presidential candidates tend to move to the center. It's that, as I've been telling anyone who would listen, Barack Obama is, in substance if not in style, an extremely cautious, utterly conventional, center-left politician. If you want to see real, transformative change in this country, he is not your guy.

The second coming of FDR he is not. As president, I think he's far more likely to resemble Bill Clinton -- except he'll be a Bill Clinton who can keep it in his pants and will likely be governing with large majorities in both houses of Congress. Which does not thrill me -- I never liked Clinton much and held my nose while voting for him.

This is not say Obama is a bad guy at all. He's whip-smart, he's a compelling speaker, he's honest*, and he has a pretty decent voting record overall. His campaign so far has been most impressive, particularly in the managerial and grassroots organizing departments. I will always give him enormous credit for speaking out against the Iraq War at a time when almost everyone else in public life was running scared. Indeed, after my first choice candidate, John Edwards, dropped out, I chose him over Hillary largely because I think he's less likely to get us involved in stupid wars than Hillary is (my other reasons were that he's less tainted by corporate sleaze than she is, and that I thought there was more of a chance he'd be slightly more liberal overall).

And also, it must be said -- in case you haven't noticed, in this country, we do not elect liberal presidents. FDR was a fluke -- he was elected when the country was suffering an economic crisis of epic proportions, and even then few believed he'd end up governing as far to the left as he did. LBJ was the other great liberal domestic policy president, but that, too, was a fluke. In the (admittedly totally tasteless) formulation of a friend of mine, the best thing that ever happened to civil rights in this country was the bullet through JFK's head. It was only in the aftermath of the martyrdom of JFK that the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. could have been passed. And even then, it still required every last ounce of LBJ's political genius to get them through.

So, in all honesty, I think Obama is about the best we can do. Yes, he opposed the war from the start. But he's been vague about when he'd start withdrawing troops, and unlike candidates like Bill Richardson, he supports letting residual troops remain. His voting record is decent overall, but it contains some serious disappointments, such as his support of the FISA compromise. Like 95% of the other Democrats in Congress, he's not exactly a profile in courage.

I've been familiar with Barack Obama for a while now. First as my state senator and now as my U.S. senator, he has sometimes greatly impressed me, but often frustrated and disappointed me as well.

He's an illustrative story: a few years ago, an activist friend of mine was working to pass a bill in the Illinois legislature regulating payday loans. His group met with a number of members of the legislature, including Barack. Many of the elected officials they spoke with told them exactly what they would and would not be able to do. Barack listened sympathetically, but didn't make any promises or in fact tip his hand in any way (didn't even say what he wouldn't be able to do, and that kind of info was useful to my friend's group). And when push came to shove, Barack didn't do a damn thing.

My friend (who, by the way, has given money to Obama and voted for him the primary) said ruefully that he wasn't particularly surprised: "That's the Barack Obama I know." He pointed out that a good chunk of Barack's campaign donations come from the banking and financial services industry in Illinois and he thinks that was probably the main reason Barack didn't want to take action on the payday loan issue.

The fact is, in his entire public career Barack Obama has never stuck his neck out for anyone or anything. He's never once taken on a big, high-profile cause or project that was highly controversial or risked failure. Yes, there's his early opposition to the war on the one hand; but on the other hand, once he got to the U.S. Senate he did little to, you know, try to stop the war, and his votes on the war have been utterly conventional Democratic votes.

Yet Hillary Clinton, when she was about the age Baracks is now, took on the daunting task of developing a health care plan. And even though that ended up being a huge failure, at least she took the risk. If she became president, I truly believe that she'd do her damndest to make universal health care a reality in this country. If John Edwards became president, he'd work like hell to enact his populist economic agenda of universal health care, making it easier to join a union, expanding the EITC, etc.

But Barack Obama? Honestly, I don't have a freaking clue. I think he'll govern like the utterly conventional Democrat that he is, but I have no idea what his policy priorities are, or what burning issue drives him.

Over this past election season, on websites and listservs and in conversations, I've seen an awful lot of cheap, hacktacular electioneering in favor of one candidate or another. But at the end of the day, I don't think there was ever all that much of a difference between Hillary and Barack. Or between those two and Edwards, for that manner. Hillary and Barack had voting records and positions on the issues that were closet to identical. They've both taken shitloads of money from Wall Street, and it's pretty clear to me that each of them is captive to corporate special interests. Indeed, I interpret Obama's recent rightward shift -- Furman, Messina, the remarks about NAFTA, the FISA compromise -- as saying to the corporate interests, "Never fear -- we'll be playing ball as usual with you folks."

As president, either Barack or Hillary, or Edwards, would be infinitely better than any Republican, but from a progressive point of view, each of them would also far short in some pretty profound and powerful ways.

But you know what? Ultimately, I don't think that they as individuals are to blame for that. I don't think Barack, or Hillary, or Edwards, are bad people. I don't think that Barack Obama, for example, went into politics so he could sell civil liberties down the river in favor of giveaways for the telecom industry. But the incentive structure in politics these days is such that he decided he had more to gain by supporting the FISA "compromise" than by opposing it.

This is where we, as liberals, progressives, lefties, activists, whatever-you-want-to-call-us, come in. I do not believe that our interests are best served by the kind of cheap electioneering we saw over the primary campaign. What would be far more effective would be an independent movement that makes strategic alliances with various political candidates but is also distinctly separate from them.

Instead of shilling for Barack, or Hillary, or whoever, we should have been pressuring the candidates to work for our votes. We should have been pressing them to take firm, non-negotiable positions in favor of things like no immunity for the telecoms, or immediate withdrawal from Iraq with no residual troops. Instead, we were really cheap dates. And when you act like suckers, don't be surprised when something like Obama's support for the FISA compromise comes back and bites you in the ass.

If we want real change in this country, the place to look for it is not in our so-called leaders, but in ourselves. What we need, in short, is a movement. Without such a movement, President Obama is not going to be able to achieve a whole lot more than President Clinton or President Carter did. But with such a movement, we may actually get somewhere. FDR was able to achieve great things because he had the strong support of a powerful labor movement. Similarly, the civil rights movement was the wind at LBJ's back. But I ask you, what will President Obama have?

Obama, like just about every other politician out there, is cautious, but also highly pragmatic. Like everyone else, he responds to incentives. As activists, what we need to do is to move the political center of gravity in this country to the left. To change the incentive structure so that it will be easier for him to do the right thing. This is a far sounder strategy, over both the short and the long term, than waiting for saints or messiahs to come along.

I'll close with one of my favorite political stories. It concerns my all-time favorite president, FDR. He was meeting with a group of reformers trying to persuade him to support one of their goals. After they finished speaking, FDR said to them, "You've convinced me. I want to do it. Now make me do it."

And that, my friend, is the task at hand.

*Added later: By "honest" I mean not corrupt, and not (insofar as politicians go, anyway) particularly prone to false or misleading statements

Comments

[Chris]

Well, Obama's not the guy who came out for Executive Order 9066 either.

Obama's the nominee, but he still only has one vote in the Senate. He's not a dictator.

But you're right, the only way to move things along is to have better voters.

[MG]

After all that stuff about the obvious lies he's told, how on earth can you then conclude that he's "honest"? He didn't just "flip flop" on FISA -- he outright lied, saying he opposed the Bush-Rockefeller-Reid-Pelosi changes when he very clearly supported them all along. He plainly lied about NAFTA, and was actually caught out on this at the time, but this was quickly brushed aside. His record for honesty is actually quite poor, and the real unfortunate thing is, he's lying about policy, not blowjobs.

Finally, if you're trying to get the guy elected, describing him in the media-approved way of bashing all Democratic candidates as "deeply flawed" isn't the way to do it. He's no more flawed than any other politician; it's just that he isn't any better, either.

[Kathy G.]

MG, I meant "honest" in the sense of "not corrupt." I'll probably amend the post to make that clear.

As to your other point, I don't think progressives are doing themselves any favors if we refuse to talk about a candidate's flaws, and shy away from criticizing them when criticism is merited. As you yourself just did, but pointing out ways in which Obama is not "honest"!

[Cosma]

I'd suggest calling this movement "21st century Americanism", but it would be counter-productive if anyone actually got the joke.

[LizardBreath]

The Barrow endorsement is really annoying me. I have a post at Unfogged ( http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2008_06_15.html#008917 )suggesting that people try to raise money for Thomas explicitly as an alternative to giving to Obama -- take the fifty bucks you were going to give to Obama, and send it to her primary campaign instead.

If it took off, maybe it might be noticed by the Obama campaign, and exert some useful pressure. Maybe.

[drip]

I would add that there are some good democratic candidates on the FISA issue. Maryland's newest representative, Donna Edwards (D-MD 4) beat Al Wynn (who left to do a little telecom lobbying) in a primary, won a special election that the governor arranged, was sworn in on Weds. and voted against the FISA bill on Friday. She has the district next to the one and only Fearless Leader Steny Hoyer.

[MG]

I'm not suggesting we not criticize him; in fact I'll do you one better: I loathe him. My point is the phrase "deeply flawed" implies he's flawed in a way beyond the normal, which isn't the case. He's just another political hack, no more flawed than McCain (less so, actually), or anyone else twisted enough to run for president. Ordinarily this would be a minor rhetorical point and not worth bringing up, but the phrase "deeply flawed" has been used exclusively towards presidentially-minded Democrats -- all of them -- and it's prejudicial and part of what has damaged the Dem brand name.

To put it another way, pointing out the guy's flaws is one thing; attaching the label "deeply flawed" to him, in the context of the current discourse, is entirely another. We have to stop the negative branding of our candidates, even when we are trying to make them better (making a smug, Machiavellian prick like Mr. Obama better is, I'm afraid, a hopeless task, but one must try).

[Nell]

in his entire public career Barack Obama has never stuck his neck out for anyone or anything. He's never once taken on a big, high-profile cause or project that was highly controversial or risked failure.

Are you just referring to his Senate career? Because if it includes his Illinois legislative career, what about his successful effort to get police interrogtions videoed. I'd say that risked failure, and started out highly controversial.

I may be wrong about this, because I haven't studied his career closely and certainly haven't made a practice of advocating for him. But Hilzoy, at Obsidian Wings, has, and it's from her posts that I recall this. (Sorry, no time to put up a link; she did a couple of long posts last fall.)

[Nell]

Oops; didn't realize comments here don't allow html style tags.

Consider the first paragraph of my comment above in quotation marks (from KathyG's main post).

[Nell]

@MG: Unless your comment is pure snarky parody, in which case it's, um, very _sophisticated_ humor that eludes me...

"Deeply flawed" is out because it contributes to negative branding, but "smug, Machiavellian prick" is fine, because that's just pointing out specific flaws.

Is the difference simply that the cable TV talkers and op ed columnists won't repeat "smug, Machiavellian prick"?

[Nell]

Please don't take this as a case of the vapors due to incivility, either; I'm on record at my blog with "gutless puke".

I'm just trying to understand the argument.

[Melancholy Korean]

I'm a Republican, but I've never been more excited about a politician than Obama.

Partly, it's generational (as much as we're not supposed to talk about it now, since we're trying to bring on board the Hill-Billy's supporters). I find the narcissism and pettiness of the Boomers tiresome. Get over yourselves!

Partly, it's his personal character and compelling life story. I like the community organizer background, versus the conventional Democratic path of corporate lawyer or Wall Street banker, who still "looks out for the people's interest." I never liked hypocrisy.

But mostly, and this gets back to point one, thanks to the war and philosophical disputes over the war's legitimacy and efficacy now raging in our party, America is now on the cusp of a major realigning of the political parties. It's going to be a dramatic, multi-year shift of alliances and coalitions, especially once the internecine debates really get going after the looming November disaster.

Obama gets it. His 50 state strategy is one manifestation of this. Even if he doesn't win any additional states, the registration of Democratic voters in former Republican strongholds will help build a progressive majority for years, if not decades. A coalition bringing in some religious voters disgusted by the current Administration, some libertarians, some conservatives, many moderates, etc etc.

"On the other hand, Hillary Clinton, when she was about the age Barack is now, took on the daunting task of developing a health care plan. And even though that ended up being a huge failure, at least she took the risk. If she became president, I truly believe that she'd do her damnedest to make universal health care a reality in this country. If John Edwards became president, he'd work like hell to enact populist economic vision."

Ugh. One can now see how the disaffected Hill-Billy voters will complain about an Obama Administration: Their superwoman would have done it so much better! Right. Riddle me this, Kathy: What does it matter if she works real hard to pass health care legislation, but the Dems don't have the votes in Congress? Or even worse, lose their majority because so many Americans, rightly, don't trust her or her husband?

[MG]

Nell,

You got it on both counts: it was intended in part as irony, but also safely too crude an example of namecalling to make the rounds. Besides, I'm a nobody and therefore not quotable.

[Karmakin]

People don't recognize nearly enough that going against the trend where people are MORE than willing to sell out the rights of their neighbors (and let's not even talk about the rights of people in other countries) in order to maintain the perception of security, is a huge political loser.

Change the society, change the politicians.

[Mitchell Freedman]

Kathy G.,

What is the "center"? I always like to think the center is where the majority is. The majority hates the NAFTA, always did. The majority wants out of Iraq. The majority wants not to give Bush any more power and to take back some of what Bush has taken.

The "center", when uttered by a corporate media pundit, means something the media outlet's officers and directors want: They want their mistresses to be able to have abortions, and be kind to gay people, and screw workers to get more money for themselves and their friends.

Obama has gone to their center, but not the center of the American people. I agree with you, however, that none of this is surprising. It still hurts though and we'll just have to help Obama the way lefties and other folks helped FDR.

[scottreads]

I guess I buy your disappointment about this and your resolve to pressure folks like Obama and give him the "incentives" to do the right thing. But I think your analysis kinda posits some unchangeable illiberal political landscape that he has to adapt to and converts what happened here into something regrettable but maybe not avoidable, like he had to do it to stay viable. But he didn't, if he had the balls and the vision and the rhetorical skills to convince people that he wants to protect them but not by tyrannizing them to do it. Would it have been difficult? Probably. But he didn't even give enough of a shit about this to even try. That's what burns me, and it says something disturbing to me about what his priorities are and how willing he is to fight to change the right-wing memes we've put up with for the last 30-40 years. Answer: not fucking much.

[Cliffy]

I can't say I much mind his tack to the right in general, because what else did we expect? But the FISA thing is really awful, first because he probably could have shut it down with a few phone calls, but moreover because it's enough of a wonky technical issue (shouldn't be but is) that he didn't need to do it as part of a PR strategy; it wouldn't have hurt him in the general to do the right thing here. But he wimped out nonetheless. Either because he's overly cautious OR because he actually agrees with the unitary executive claptrap. Neither augurs well for the future.

[Lafayette]

KG: It was only in the aftermath of the martyrdom of JFK that the Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. could have been passed. And even then, it still required every last ounce of LBJ's political genius to get them through.

The US has shifted subtly Right. This was not difficult for Americans, since the center is none to centrist by other comparisons. What comparisons?, one might ask.

On a political landscape that included European countries, which have known Social Democracy since the end of WW2, the US is decidedly right-of-center. It has not the same array of social services (Health Care, Educational Assistance, Family Social Services, Poverty Subsidies, etc., etc., etc.)

In terms of Social Investments, as defined and measured by the OECD, it lingers somewhere in the lower levels. Why?

Are Americans all "rugged individualists" who will take all that life can throw at them, "shrug it off and win, win, win" at the end of the day? If we were, what happened in New Orleans after Katrina? Worse yet, after the Significant Event of Watts in California, has anything changed there? No, in both instances. Watts is still a dangerous place, and New Orleans has become the Urban Renewal Project that the white minority have always wanted.

Or, are we a nation that simply doesn't care? Life is in the fast-lane of our rat-race to riches -- and the poor are just acceptable road-kill?

It seems so. But, is that Individualism or Selfishness? I suspect it is more the latter than the former. Once upon a time, long, long ago, the individualist pioneer, despite their convictions of self-competence, would stop and help those who were less fortunate than they.

But, we are the New Americans, aren't we? Forged in crucible of numerous wars (WW2, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq), stalwart in our keen desire for the trappings of wealth, addicted to celebrities who have "made it" and become role models. All in silent admiration of those who make a killing on Wall Street. These are the social attributes of an Individualist, not a Collective Society.

If that is so, then the Obamarama Campaign had better consider the raw materials that BO has to work with before he "Changes America".

Take heed: The Europeans, after almost total destruction at the end of WW2, learned that without government engagement in the process of Social Democracy, then nothing really changes. Economies just evolve, but Social Justice is not rendered.

[otto]

You might include his grovelling to AIPAC recently, a mindset which is likely to get us into a war with Iran, in your list of recent BHO sins. Adopting the right-wing Israeli lobby attitude towards the Middle East is a rather more important error than appointing Jason Furman.

And, as mentioned above, Obama did push videotaping police interrogations.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

[jonnybutter]

Good post, and all to true, KG. The one thing I would take issue with is the implication that making our candidates better is our only recourse. It is our main recourse, but I do think there was a vital difference between Edwards and the other two, and, boring as it may sound, that difference was the issue of reforming how we finance campaigns. Almost every discussion about 'incentives' in American politics ends up being about money as much as votes - who candidates are taking money from. Edwards campaigned both in '04 and '08 on, among other things, radically reforming how we finance campaigns. That is the game changer. Any candidate who isn't serious about this fundamental problem, from which so many other problems flow, is only second-best IMO. The necessity for politicians to get large sums of money gets to the heart of why our politics is so laughably corrupt. I like that Obama has raised a lot of money from small donors, but that's not going to be all he needs, and it's not what got him to the US Senate. And of course, it's not how people in congress do it, mostly. Our system is one of legal, utter corruption, and we're so used to it we don't see it anymore.

It's a big reason I was for Edwards (but not the only one).

[jazzboken]

This discussion is why the Republicans always win. They have a united front in which each has compromised some of his/her objectives in order to win those they care about most. The left always has the idea that their personal views are right and not up for compromise. The Democrats haven't won yet you dolts. Forcing Obama to take and defend difficult positions before he gets elected is nice in theory but what happens is that each one of those positions will alienate someone. Shifting the center takes time. Get him elected first and give him a majority. Then if he does well but doesn't come far enough left we can try to elect someone better. What I know right now is there are 2 candidates and one is WAY WAY better than the other. Support him, and don't tell me it's more important to elect one representative from Georgia than it is to elect the right president. Gimme a break.I am staying true to what I said before the primaries, which is whoever gets the nomination will have my vigorous support.

[Nell]

Thanks for that link, Otto.

It's not inconceivable for him to have handled this issue similarly, but the structural incentives of U.S. presidential campaigns are pretty skewed against that at this point.

I feel for the many campaign operatives and volunteers right now; they're either trying to absorb a real blow to their enthusiasm or busily rationalizing it away. The rationalizers are on their way to a brilliant career in politics...

[jonnybutter]

This discussion is why the Republicans always win.

Oh, come on. Of course it isn't. Democrats lose because of fear (their own). It's not that other pols don't have fear, it's that Dems are so neurotic about it, acting ridiculously militant, or ridiculously conciliatory, or ridiculously something-else (perhaps all at the same time) each at exactly the least appropriate time.

The reason Dems lose is indeed fractiousness, but it's not *merely* simple fractiousness. Rather it's the peculiar ineptitide of the committee - the very large committee. The Will Rogers cliche is so enduring because it's so true, perhaps more true now, at least in some ways, than in his day: the Dem party is currently not an organized party in the ideological sense. The good side of being the Party opposed to the modern GOP is that the Republicans have ceded such a vast stretch of ideological territory - they're no longer either conservative (in the American context), liberal nor libertarian. You'd think they'd be a little more jealous of some of it, particularly fiscal conservatism, but no; they just blithely toss it away. The bad part of being the Party opposed to the GOP is that you , the opposition party, are forced to decide what YOU are. There are so many choices which aren't made for you, that you have to go out on a few limbs and make them. Naturally, Democrats suck at that in recent decades. I think that's why ideological incoherence has worked for so long for the modern GOP: no serious opposition.

There is a reason many of us are disgusted with Obama's FISA statement - after years (and not just the Jr Bush years) of seeing the constitution being used to wipe asses, some of us thought that beginning to restore the constitution was kinda fundamental, that this is more than simply another 'battle', interchangable with any other 'battle'. I'm still supporting BO, of course, but craven is craven.

[MikeZ]

"But the incentive structure in politics these days is such that he decided he had more to gain by supporting the FISA "compromise" than by opposing it."

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with the current system. I don't think it's realistic for any single individual politician to change a SYSTEMIC problem.

[4jkb4ia]

This is MB's argument for endorsing Obama: not the candidate, but the people who see him as a vessel. If the people who see him as a vessel think that everything he does must be right, they have failed the citizenship responsibilities he wants them to assume.