Why is President Obama’s popularity fading? You can hear a lot of answers to this question. But for me the answer is obvious, and comes down to the two C’s—change and continuity. He promised the former, but when it comes to the most basic issues facing the country, the economy and foreign affairs, he’s governing in keeping with the latter.
On this Labor Day, just consider who is setting this Administration’s economic policies. Under President Bush it was the trio of Paulson, Geithner and Bernanke. And today? Paulson is gone but the other two remain, joined by another non-agent of change named Summers.
Obama got sold by these three on the need for continuity above all else in dealing with the markets, sold on the notion that the markets mustn’t lose confidence in his policies. And by jolly they haven’t. They’ve gone up nearly 50 percent since March, huge bonuses at places like Goldman Sachs are being handed out by the bushel basket, real regulatory reform has been assigned to limbo-land, and the kind of kinky financial innovations that generates short-term profits are flourishing. While on Main Street (remember Main Street, Mr. Obama?), more people are losing jobs, many people who still have them are working harder for less, foreclosures outpace new home sales, easy to get credit for individuals has gone the way of the dodo.
Where’s the change in all this? I see continuity from Bush policies. Markets are as happy as in the good old pre-recession days. For ordinary working people, it’s the same-old-squeeze, only worse.
When it comes to foreign affairs, change is only really apparent in the gender of the State Department’s new head and a new geographic area of black hole foolishness.
Is the rationale for playing a big time American role in the never ending Afghan Great Game truly all that much better than the puffed up rationale used to justify our Great Adventure in Iraq? Is the toothless hand wringing when Israel totally disses the Obama Administration’s demand that it stop building in the West Bank really all that different from the “disappointment” expressed by the Bush Administration when Israel did the same thing in Bush’s latter years in office?
I voted for Barack Obama because I wanted real change. A lot of people, especially independents, were also aching for such change. What we’ve gotten instead in a hefty dose of continuity. This is what’s reflected in the President’s fast fading popularity.
I see him these days and I can’t help remembering the movie “On The Waterfront.” The scene in which the burned out boxer played by Marlon Brando turns to his older sibling in the back seat of a taxi and says: “You wuz my brudder. You shoulda protected my interests.”
For a time our new president really did seem willing and able to take this country to a better place. To change things that had to be changed. Such a lost opportunity. So sad.