Obama: Less Progressive Than Advertised

There’s much consternation among progressives and the Republicans over recent developments in Obama’s unmasking as the tough, take-no-prisoners politician — and centrist Democrat — he is and has always been. Jazz Shaw comments here at TMV on Obama’s ‘Rovian’ roleplaying here.

In a piece which seems to me to be simultaneously mean-spirited and [very] grudgingly admiring David Brooks writes of ‘The Two Obamas.’ Andrew Sullivan — who seemingly admires the trait — calls his comment on Obama’s [intelligent, strategically unexceptionable] decision not to go the public funding route ‘Niccolo Obama.’

In the meantime, the progressives who supported him are despondent about what they view as his 180 (though it is really a 360) on NAFTA, with respect to which it appears he isn’t as inclined as he let on back during the primaries to take a hammer to; his support of white conservative Democrat John Barrow over African-American liberal Regina Thomas; and his stated support of the FISA so-called ‘compromise’ legislation. It’s clear that a lot of them feel let down.

These are not, of course, the changes that his progressive supporters were expecting.

Were people really not listening to anything except Obama’s rhetoric?

As for ‘Rovian’ tactics, David Axelrod has been called the Democrats’ answer to Karl Rove.

Hillary supporters like me were cognizant of — and vainly pointed out — the deployment by the Obama campaign of certain tactics that one might call Rovian back when we thought it perhaps ought to matter to our fellow progressives. They took no notice. They heard what they wanted to hear through some form of selective deafness. As Taylor Marsh — like me, an erstwhile Hillary supporter — points out, Obama is not an ideologue. He never has been. Anyone who took a careful look at his advisers and their known opinions could see this.

But I don’t want to be unfair to progressives. As David Brooks — in sardonic vein — observes, Republicans also have completely failed to recognize who Obama is.

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson….

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside. (NYT)

We see here the dawning realization of just how formidable the ‘Obama machine’ really is. Didn’t it, after all, bring down the fabled ‘Clinton machine’?

But Obama is doubtless right, from a strategic standpoint, to keep his eye on the ball, even at the expense of some temporary inattention to current issues of concern to progressives. I assume that his campaign delayed his response in order to run a few helpful focus groups.

In the fight for the presidency, political strategy and savvy will trump idealism every time. Many seem happy enough for him to flip-flop on the public funding issue.

Don’t we want to win? Didn’t we pray for a contender who could do that? Let Obama be Obama, I say.

After he wins, we progressives can join together to exert such pressure as they can to get essentially centrist Obama to create the Changes that we want to implement. At least we can count on him to appoint judges we can stomach and to refrain from vetoing legislation sponsored by reform-minded Democrats, if any.

At least I assume so. I don’t know whether we can count on him to veto legislation which the other side wishes to implement in favor of their special interests — fingers crossed. It’s really all, based on past precedent, I expect for any politician who has accumulated enough money and power to aspire to the presidency. Unfortunate, but true.

He’s in it to win. And I want him to win.

In the meantime, as an erstwhile supporter of the much-reviled Hillary there is a great deal of mean-spirited satisfaction in saying, ‘I told you so.’ So I shall refrain.