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Barack Obama: From Messiah to Pariah?

June 25th, 2008
By SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist

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There is something comical but ultimately rather sad about the widespread dropping of jaws over Barack Obama’s support of the expansion of government surveillance powers and other recent actions that reveal him to be someone whom he has been all along — a hard assed and thoroughly pragmatic politician who does not walk on water but has been astute at harnessing this image to power his own ambitious path to the Democratic presidential nomination and White House.

Part of the disappointment has to do with Obama supporters having much more to lose as the scales fall from their eyes.

When John McCain does one of his routine flip flops, it is par for the course. But the howls of outrage in the blogosphere and sense of betrayal on the part of some Obamaniacs as he suddenly seems to be running against form still is surprising considering how cynical many of these bloggers have been about the presidential campaign in general.

Not that there are no flies on me.

I have bought into Obama’s hope-and-change message while expressing concern early and often as to whether he has enough experience and can surround himself with enough people who do have the experience to lead us away from the Age of Bush to the promised land of electoral and government reform. So I am disappointed that he endorsed the FISA bill after having said earlier that he would filibuster the measure, which is an atrocious piece of legislation because it legalizes illegal behavior.

I am disappointed that Obama put himself in the position of having to apologize to two Muslim women after they were barred from a campaign photo op, as well as his tap dancing in general on all things Muslim. I am disappointed that he has pandered to the ethanol crowd, which is making a further hash of energy and agriculture policy. And I am disappointed . . . well, you get the point.

Indeed, there have been several times recently when Obama has seemed more an insider than fresh upstart. I am disappointed yes, but not surprised.

Eight presidential campaigns and a snoutful of realism forces me to acknowledge that you can’t be a politician without being a member of the political class, and that even the most principled politician carries in their hip pocket an adjustable wrench known as pragmatism.

It is in this context that Obama is doing exactly what anyone in his position should do: Run to his base in the primaries and run to the center in the general election. And hope that what he says over the next five months helps bring to bear what could be a signal accomplishment of the opening months of his presidency — consensus building in an era of divide-and-conquer politics.



This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 25th, 2008 at 2:56 am and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 12 Comments

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    While progressives love to tout themselves as the reality based community, they keep putting their hopes into politicians who are fakes on their surface. Does anyone really believe that a politician that has develop his career by playing the race card really believe in consensus. Does anyone really believe that a politicians who would throw his grandmother under the bus his a fake story about menacing black men in Hawaii to defend a race hustler really believe in consensus. If Senator Obama really believe in consensus, he would have put some effort into appeal to blue collar whites instead of settling on winning the Democratic Primary with a 50% plus 1 strategy.
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    Thanks Shaun!
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    Shaun -- Thanks for this. We are exactly on the same page and I don't think anyone could have reflected this POV better than you have here.
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    "Run to his base in the primaries and run to the center in the general election."

    But that's the thing: FISA shouldn't be (and probably isn't) the center. Staunch conservatives should reject it because it is against their ideals as well.

    Ethanol is not the center. Again, all reasonable people agree it makes no sense.

    I'm not disappointed that Obama is primarily a centrist -- I like that and always believed he was -- I am disappointed that his "consensus" building on these issues is in the beltway power structures that have no real base of support in the general population...or at least shouldn't.

    The only silver lining is that he doesn't seem to support it much himself and just saw that it was a losing cause to fight it. Still he should have spoken out.
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    The more everyone is disappointed, angry or autraged, the more I like Obama.
    I never expected him to walk on water. I was just betting on him to walk in the right direction, and in that I am not in the least disappointed..

    In a country as divided as ours, pragmatism is the only possible way to work. Revolution would only be followed by counter revolution, and we'd be back to square one.

    As to his working on the Beltway instead of depending on popular support, I'm glad he's not so naive as to depend on the undependable.. Popular support is a fleeting thing, while moving governance in the right direction is a long term, inch-by-inch undertaking. Juggling the centrist opinion on an issue while gauging the odds for getting it implemented demands prioritization. Prioritization and pragmatism are a good duo.
    In fact, slow and steady has a better chance of survival than fast and rash.

    I don't like all his decisions. I expect to dislike more of them.
    As long as the direction is the right direction, Obama willl have my support.

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    Here's the funny thing, all of the black folks in my family who support Senator Obama for the POTUS have ALWAYS said "he's a politician". It's the racial pride that's fueling their vote. In fact, Obama's change message means, to me, away from Bush and the Republicans. I've never, and you can read my blog posts here, thought that Senator Obama can bring about the "America Utopia". Only a dictator can do that and that would probably not be a utopia...
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    Mikkel,

    I agree with you about ethanol, (which,btw, is less complicated than FISA.
    What I don't see is an easy way to tackle the problem.
    Ethanol producers , and the local ecomy around them,are constituents, and as wrong headed as they and their Congresspeople may be, they can't be ignored, especially in this economic climate.

    Like the poppy growers of Afghanistan, they need an alternate source of profits.if they are to stop growing corn to produce ethanol.
    The ideas are coming so fast and furious, I don't know what Obama has in mind in this regard. I hope, though, that he is considering this aspect, or there will be chaos instead of improvement. Encourage use of switch grass instead?

    Whatever the final decision, the local economy has to be sustained while new businesses or different business come up.
    At least, that 's the way it looks to me.
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    Does anyone really care what SuperD has to say? Seems like he got a BA in Ad Hominem writing.
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    I'm somewhat disappointed in Obama over the FISA legislation. On the other hand, it makes political sense for Obama to express qualified support on this highly emotionally charged issue, while possibly working behind-the-scenes with others, like Chris Dodd, who can fight this battle without handing McCain another talking point.

    There's a political reality about ethanol too. An enormous amount of political and financial power is concentrated in the hands of petroleum interests, and the Republican Party is the seat of that power, which to this day fights to equate patriotism with continued and increased pandering to big oil. Who can unseat this powerful and wealthy coalition? How about the corn lobby? Getting big oil out of the driver's seat is an important goal, and the coalition of agribusiness companies and farmers is an important Democratic constituency. It will be up to the new administration to move our production of alternative fuels in a more environmentally sound direction. The agribusiness companies and the farmers are capable of producing crops that take less petroleum input to grow, and it will be to their financial advantage to do so. The big shift right now is from drilling and mining for energy sources, to growing them. Decisions about what exactly we grow as feedstock for our alternative fuels will be made over the course of time, and I believe wise decisions can and will be made.
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    Shaun,

    We know that McCain has already supported public-unfriendly policies for political gain. Evidence of similar tendencies on Obama's part were in plain sight months ago, but it wasn't until after he clinched the nomination that we started seeing blatant evidence (FISA, NAFTA, campaign funding...).

    That said, I understand why many bloggers (esp. those who aren't as seasoned as you) feel outraged and disillusioned.

    Seven years under GWB made many bloggers ravenous for a president who would be vastly different from ordinary politicians.

    Obama came along and repeatedly said that he is non-ordinary (and new and clean and not taking lobbyist dollars and...) .

    He said those things effectively enough that many people