OK it’s been a couple of months and the nation’s ills haven’t been fixed yet, so I feel like complaining about all the bad decisions Obama is making. Well actually I think the vast majority of things aren’t his fault — even if he does make bad economic or foreign policy decisions they are accepted wisdom and he feels his hands are tied, so it’s expected. I supported him from the beginning and was excited about his candidacy, but I saw those sorts of decisions coming from a mile away. The real reason why I supported Obama was how I thought he would react once the economic (and/or foreign) crisis gets incredibly bad and accepted wisdom is being openly challenged. That’s when Obama will make or break it in my eyes.
But that said, there are a couple of things that he is doing I have a huge problem with. These things are fully in his control and are antithetical to his projected image and governing philosophy he said he’d have. I understand there are rationalizations for all these things, but he is supposed to be better than that, and I hope for the sakes of temporarily un-cynical people everywhere he reverses these things soon.
The details are covered by Glenn Greenwald, and I’ll just let him handle them.
1) When it comes to executive power, Obama is merely paying lip service to renouncing some of the extreme positions of the Bush Administration. Whether it’s “enemy combatants” at Bagram, the continuance of “state secrets” positions about eavesdropping or the use of signing statements in extreme ways, Obama has so far continued to thwart the spirit of international law, public inquiry and separation of powers.
2) Under a cloak of anonymity, Administration officials are using the press to frame debate and smear opponents. This is something that I know happened a lot under Clinton too, and the worst examples seem to revolve around Treasury issues. Lawrence Summers has been accused of being very scummy, and I’m not sure about Geithner, but the manipulation and spin by the powers that be seem to be in full force. I thought that the press had learned a lesson with that Bush fellow not to use anonymous sourcing anymore. [As a side note, if people are having to defend Dodd against unfounded claims of being in the financial firms’ pockets, then something is seriously wrong.] This issue was also noted by Kathy as I was crafting this post.
While I expect Obama to make policy decisions I don’t agree with, these two areas are signs of an operational governing philosophy that is directly contradictory with what he promised to stand for. That philosophy is the source of his political power, and will become increasingly important if the economy fails to respond to government intervention (which I believe it will) or we have a foreign policy challenge.
Update: I forgot one that commenter DaGoat pointed out. “I also feel his use of pessimistic projections to justify the stimulus and using optimistic predictions to project the deficit was devious and definitely not the Obama he ran as.” I am not so sure that his projections to justify the stimulus were that pessimistic or out of line with the deficit projections. In fact from what I’ve read they dovetail fairly nicely. However, his projections for growth are completely insane. There is no way we are going back to 3.5%+ growth for a long time in an indebted economy, and more realistic projections from economic optimists I’ve read (recession ends by the end of the year) are for 1.5%-2% for the next few years. That latter growth rate is the average value for major industrialized countries, so it is definitely the upper limit of what I think is realistic, and yet 40-50% less growth than the Administration projected. Their projections are a huge disservice to the long term budgeting for the country.
Update 2: About the “bait and switch” projections, I think I figured out what people are referring to, and address it in the comments.