Do Voters Owe Obama an Apology?
As he assesses his performance in 2009, Barack Obama could claim he has been the victim of a bait-and-switch by Americans who voted him into office a year ago. Elected on a platform of Change, he was immediately asked to become the first responder to an economy falling apart.
He is not copping that plea, but the case should be made over the yowling from the do-nothing Right.
In a year-end interview, while defending himself on the health care imbroglio, the President notes that “the most important thing we did this year was to ensure that the financial system did not collapse,” almost an aside to the reality that, after campaigning two years on one set of premises, he was thrust into a situation no one foresaw.
Forgotten in his falling approval ratings now are the weeks of “one president at a time,” when Americans were so anxious to be rid of George W. Bush that Obama had to keep reminding them that he was not yet in the Oval Office.
Also lost in the mists of the pre-recession past are candidate Hillary Clinton’s argument about being “ready on Day One,” a test that Barack Obama passed with flying colors.
Ironically, conservative Andrew Sullivan is one of few along the political spectrum making the case that “2009 has been an extraordinarily successful year for Obama,” citing his successes in reversing the Unitary Executive, bailing out the banks (however imperfectly) and passing a stimulus to shift the economy from “a tailspin to stabilization and some prospect of job growth next year.”
Sullivan’s conclusion: “Yes, we have. And yes, we still are the ones we’ve been waiting for–if we still care enough to swallow purism and pride and show up for the less emotionally satisfying grind of real, practical, incremental reform.”
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15 Responses to “Do Voters Owe Obama an Apology?”
Talk about Christmas cheer, concocted from too much giddiness. The Obama silly swoon is still found on the fringes, I see.
We're not giddy, just hopeful. Hope under GWB had no chance in hell.
Sure, I'll apologize first.
Dear President Obama,
I'm sorry for wanting you to be a super-being capable of jumping tall buildings in a single bound. I'm sorry my whining demands of the lunatic left [you know who you are] took a front seat to the pragmatic, pressing and dangerous needs of the day.
I promise in the future I'll be less selfish, whiney and demanding if you promise to clobber the GOP on health care reform and put Bush And Cheney et al. on trial in world court for war crimes.
Sincerely, Sil
Giddiness shows a lack of one or more things — essential (at least, they should be). Sullivan and those like him, after this (entire) year, are in even worse shape.
Normal people were never disconnected from Earth when Obama was elected, but if they loathed the Republicans (they're mentally ill if they concentrated on Bush or Cheney), the normal response to the elections (of all Dems, not only Obama) was relief. (If after a year, they're still that way, the disconnection and other problems are demonstrably even worse.)
“Hope”? For what, exactly? (That is, if anyone using that word actually could define it.) Something vague that faded in the 1970s? (That applies to the feeling as well as the goals, if any are identified.)
And the mainstream is not only disappointed but repelled by the farther-left nonsense the Dems chose to engage in. (That's why they're in such trouble now. Awww, so they had to constrain their health care “reform,” as part of their recovery attempt.)
“I promise in the future I'll be less selfish, whiney and demanding if you promise to clobber the GOP on health care reform and put Bush And Cheney et al. on trial in world court for war crimes.”
Well, he and the Congre-Dems got the first part right. Ugly, but successful. The second part, that would be even more disastrous than the disasters the Dems have engineered this year for themselves.
I apologize, I thought he would be worse than he has been. Unlike the Dems, I am not disappointed that he does nor walk on water.
He handles the mechanics of the Presidency just fine. It's running the country where he and his team, more than (also) the Congre-Dems, are in trouble: when merely dressing up and playing at governing (inventing what they are doing, often on a whim, implusively, or hastily contrived from nothing, all while out of touch with the world beyond them) just isn't going to be enough, let alone be good.
Obama has the politician and party figurehead role down quite well. Nice smile, charm, exploits his attractiveness to those who are susceptible…he did a good job, I must say, of defending(!) the Senate bill and the sacrifice of the public option (in exchange for … ???).
Given what he was left to work with, Obama isn't doing too terribly. That said, we certainly don't want to leave the bar sitting as low as it was during Bush/Cheney etc. – which means the dems will feel free to “encourage” him… which is more than the lockstep, rubber-stamping R's ever did for GWB.
I'll be more generous. Stein, if not Sullivan, has won a new job — official ObamaCo communications director of the White House and the media throughout this nation (and its foreign offices). No longer will we have to suppress criticism or seek Stalinist denunciation of “fishy information,” or settle for managing media press conferences. It's time to do the job right, and have all the media disseminate the Correct Information, always.
“Yes, we have”
And if we're “good” we'll robotically nod our heads up and down, and then be quiet and still.
“Unlike the Dems, I am not disappointed that he does not walk on water.”
Some, including Andrew Sullivan, who is a “conservative” [chuckle], prefer the Great Leader stuff.
(If Stein and Sullivan can't work for Obama, how about, say, Chavez or Kim Jong Il?)
Andrew Sullivan a conservative? Apologies to Obama?
Obviously I've found the thread with the strongest egg nog on the internet! lol Don't spill any on the carpet, it will probably burn a hole down a couple miles where its millions of degrees hot.
Robert,
Excellent post. Well-written and sensible. Thank you for it.
Dear President Obama,
I'm sorry for hoping you might govern the nation in a moderate and bipartisan way, and live up to your stated principles. Obviously it was too much of a change to hope for.
Leonidas
Right up there with “liberal Zell Miller”
ROTFLMAO
No, apology is necessary. and no also to expecting him to be some superhero, — just hold him to his campaign promises, and then lead him out to pasture if he dishonors us and himself by not delivering. Which if that was his goal, I think he is doing a good job. He is also turning out to be much more of a corporatist democrat then most had imagined………and it is early, it is only springtime in all things Obama, but the ice will harden around him. Myself , I didn't invest the farm, so it is not such a shock, but his changeover is greater than I had imagined. And I think the people have a write to squawk when someone says one thing and does another.