Most liberals, myself included, have become progressively disenchanted with President Obama since the beginning of his administration. With the recent health care debacle that disenchantment has reached such an intensity that for the first time I consider it unlikely that he will be re-elected. Therefore, barring unforeseen circumstances, I am hoping to see a serious challenge to his re-nomination from the Democratic left.

The main reason for our disenchantment has been Obama’s turn to the center or center-right since being elected: His decision to “look forward” rather than prosecute Bush administration officials for their use of arbitrary incarceration, torture, and preemptive war seemed inconsistent with his outspokenness against these crimes as a U.S. Senator; his rhetoric in favor of fair trade during his campaign gave way to following the advice of his free trade advisors as President; his campaign pledges to focus on relief for homeowners gave way to a massive bailout of Wall Street as President; and most recently, his campaign promise to offer public health insurance to all Americans was dropped as President.

Yet, even as he campaigned substantially to the left of where he ended up as President, there were several clues to his center leaning tendencies prior to his winning the Democratic nomination. The purpose of noting this is not to criticize those who supported him all the way. I have a lot of respect for those who worked so hard for his election, in the hope of a “change we can believe in”. But if I’m correct, and the clues were there, we would do well to consider what those clues might have been, in the hope of being better able to recognize similar clues in the future. Let’s take a look at some of the pre-election clues regarding Obama’s centrist leanings – which I wrote about during the 2008 primary season:


CLUES TO OBAMA’S CENTRIST LEANINGS PRIOR TO HIS 2008 ELECTION VICTORY

One America or Two Americas – Obama’s explosive debut onto the national scene

My first awareness of Barack Obama came as the result of his appearance at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when he exploded onto the national scene with his “One America” speech. The contrast between the world views of John Edwards and Barack Obama was starkly evident at that convention. At the same convention where Obama spoke of “One America”, the theme of Edwards’ speech, consistent with his presidential campaign, was “Two Americas”. That theme indicated a straight forward acknowledgement of the increasing income disparity in our country to Gilded Age proportions and 37 million Americans (12.7% of the U.S. population) living in poverty.

Obama’s theme of “One America” was optimistic and hopeful, and it was very enthusiastically received by a large number of Americans. Edwards’ theme of “Two Americas” was more daring in the sense that most Americans don’t like to hear criticism of their country. But it certainly depicted the reality of the current state of our nation much better than Obama’s speech did. I did not share the enthusiasm for that speech that so many other Americans, from both the left and center did.

An article in The Nation appearing soon after the Convention opined that it isn’t difficult to reconcile Obama’s “One America” theme with Edwards’ “Two Americas” theme. The basis of that opinion was that Obama was speaking of an aspiration, whereas Edwards was speaking of the current reality. But it’s not at all clear to me that Obama was speaking of an aspiration, rather than what he considered to be a reality. For example, Obama said “There's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America”. That’s a nice aspiration, but it was stated as a fact rather than as an aspiration. And it’s not true. I agree more with what Paul Krugman had to say on the subject, in “The Conscience of a Liberal”, as much more reflective of current reality:



Excessive “bipartisanship” – throwing liberals under the bus

I gained my first in-depth familiarity with Barack Obama when I read his book, “The Audacity of Hope”. I found the first chapter to be extremely irritating. It reeked of “bipartisanship”. In his effort to bend over backwards to be fair to Republicans he disparaged his own party and cast them as too liberal. That made me especially unhappy because the book was released just as our country was in the midst of a crucially important election campaign for the control of Congress. Here are some excerpts that indicate what I consider to be Obama’s unfair yet subtle criticisms of Democrats or liberals, followed by my editorial comments:


Those are awfully tough words for a politician to use against his own party. The Democratic Party is not the party of reaction – the Republican Party is. It is statements like these that have great potential for political use by Republicans.


The New Deal exemplifies what is best about the Democratic Party. It lifted millions out of poverty, and it served for many decades as a bulwark of financial security for the American people. Republican encroachment against New Deal programs since the early 1980s has been one of the worst things to befall our country. This statement by Obama is something I would expect more from a Republican than a Democrat. It belittles the best of the Democratic Party, and it obscures the pressing need we have to reverse Republican encroachment against perhaps the most successful group of programs the U.S. Congress ever enacted.

When the term “interest group” is used in a pejorative sense it is generally taken to mean a small group that has a financial interest in a particular political outcome. Thus, if the oil industry participates in the writing of energy legislation, it is acting as an interest group. Groups such as the International Red Cross, human rights organizations, or the ACLU, on the other hand, are not “interest groups” in that sense. It seems to me that lumping such organizations under the term “interest group” diminishes them by implying that their purpose is merely to enhance their own wealth or power.


In the first place, members of Congress should be suspicious of all military action, and I have serious qualms about any Congressperson who isn’t. Secondly, this is a straw man statement if I’ve ever seen one. What military action could he possibly be talking about that Democrats were suspicious of but shouldn’t have been suspicious of? If anything, Democrats and Republicans both have been way too eager to facilitate military action that they should have been suspicious of. A statement like this does nothing but give credence to the Republican myth that Democrats are “weak on defense”.


What on earth is he talking about?


Wait for a White House scandal? We’ve had a whole pile of more White House scandals right in front us than our country has ever seen, and yet we hardly do anything about it. What is he talking about? Words like this serve only to inhibit Congress from exerting their responsibility to hold the Executive Branch accountable for their actions.


When’s the last time that happened?


There he goes again giving credence to another Republican talking point: The stereotypical “tax and spend” liberal.


I find the implication that Democrats have acted as isolationists in regard to George Bush’s “War on Terror” to be ridiculous. The truth is much the opposite – Many Democrats as well as Republicans served as rubber stamps for the Bush administration’s grab for ever more power and adventurism in foreign affairs. The Iraq War and Military Commissions Act of 2006 are two of the most egregious examples.


In other words, he’s implying that Democrats are equally to blame for the incompetence of the Republican Congress prior to 2007.


Denunciations of imperialism came too easily?? The United States is currently the most feared and imperialistic country in the world. We have done tremendous harm to numerous countries over the past several decades through our imperialist adventures. Denunciations of American imperialism within our own country, especially among politicians, have been far too infrequent. To imply otherwise is to condone and facilitate more of the same.


He wants us to be constrained by religion?


This sounds like Republican talking points against programs to provide safety nets for the vulnerable – as if they haven’t been cut enough already.


Obama’s purposeful appeal to Ronald Reagan admirers

In early 2008, Obama stirred up a good deal of controversy by talking about Ronald Reagan in an apparently favorable light. Here are some excerpts:


This is not a one time incident. Obama also mentions Reagan in “The Audacity of Hope”. After saying that he was disturbed by Reagan’s election in 1980 and his assaults on the poor, Obama continues:


I found these words of Obama to be unnecessarily disparaging of liberals while fawning over Ronald Reagan and his policies – policies that did immeasurable harm to our country.


Health care

Obama was the second of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates to come out with a comprehensive health care plan. John Edwards came out with a plan in February 2007. It was a plan for universal health coverage, which included a strong public option plan for any American who wanted it. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman reviewed the plan and then concluded in an op-ed titled “Edwards Get it Right”:


Obama came out with his health care plan three months later, and Clinton followed four months after that. Krugman had good things to say about all three plans, but he explained why Obama’s plan was a little weaker than the other two. Krugman became especially concerned when Obama began attacking the health care plans of his two main rivals using Republican talking points that were inaccurate. Krugman had this to say about that:


I will add that the Obama plan has become immensely weaker during the current health care reform debate. It is also worth noting that when Obama’s plan as a presidential candidate included the public option, health care insurance was voluntary. Now that it no longer includes a public option as an alternative to private insurance, it is mandatory.


OBAMA’S DILEMMA

For all the above reasons I think that that there were lots of clues prior to the 2008 presidential election pointing to a substantially more conservative Barack Obama than most people realized.

Nevertheless, I think it’s fair to consider the unique and substantial pressures that President Obama has been faced with. I say that not to defend his policies, many with which I strongly disagree. Nor do I wish to cut him slack for them. Yet I do think that his somewhat unique problems deserve consideration.

Many of us, myself included (notwithstanding my many concerns about an Obama presidency), were elated and amazed to see the race barrier broken in a presidential election. We thought that this historic precedent could lead to a new era in terms of race relations in the United States. I thought that even a moderately successful Obama presidency would go a long way towards combating racism in our country. Millions of Americans would see their racial stereotypes go by the wayside as they became used to the idea of a black president.

But I now see that I was wrong about that. Though a comfortable majority of American voters voted for Obama in 2008, there is nevertheless a very sizable minority of racists who will never give him credit for anything under any circumstance. With people like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh ready and eager to pounce and misrepresent any action of his in the worst possible light, that sizable minority is maintained at a fever pitch of intense hatred. Obama may believe that moving to the center will placate them, but it should be clear by now that it won’t.

As a result, President Obama is now the target of perhaps as much intense and widespread racial hatred in his own country as any single person in the history of the world. He could move to the right of Attila the Hun, and they would still call him a “Socialist”. He’s received a record number of death threats, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them were acted upon. Or alternatively, if Obama threatened the interests of the Military Industrial Complex I wouldn’t be surprised to see him knocked off in a scenario that simulated a “lone gunman”. It’s hard for me to imagine what it would be like to be the focus of so much potentially violent hatred.

The truth of the matter is that, notwithstanding the fact that our country elected a black President in 2008, it could only have happened to one who was acceptable to the corporatocracy. If President Obama had threatened the interests of the corporatocracy they would undoubtedly have showered the full force of their wrath upon him, as they did against Al Gore in 2000, John Kerry in 2008, and other Democratic primary candidates who appeared to be especially threatening to them, particularly Howard Dean in 2004 and John Edwards in 2008. Add to that the pockets of virulent racism in our country, and Obama would have stood little chance of being elected in 2008. Likewise, if he threatens corporate interests as President he will become the target of unremitting corporate attacks. Undoubtedly he recognizes that and continues to act accordingly.

I don’t say this to make excuses for him. I don’t like many of his policies, and I won’t support them. But still, I think it behooves us to be aware of the problems he faces.