despite all the premature verdicts, the jury has yet to even convene on obama's tenure as president. is he a republican or dlc suck-up? or is he really progressive?

perhaps the real answer depends more on US than we care to admit.

fdr found a very effective political strategy in that he did NOT come in with a screaming liberal agenda. he promise action, he promised a "new deal", but he did not specify what it meant. in fact, he probably did not know himself what it was going to mean other than that it would not look like hoover's old deal.

clinton came in an quickly did a few things to appeal to liberals, most obviously try to integrate gays in the military. he met resistance and wound up backpedalling, leaving us with the ridiculous "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and such was his burn that he was careful never to overtly appeal to the left again. mostly what we got was a slowing of the move to the right for 8 years.

obama, by contrast, is minimizing the criticism on the right by appealing to common interests, talking about the fact and problems and non-political themes we largely all agree on. this frees him up to do what he wants, to the extent that he doesn't get overwhelming flak from the right.

should we be quiet, he will continue to solidify his power and broad appeal by doing things in a centrist way.
should we be vocal, he will be compelled to do some things to appeal to us. BUT, he will be able to do it in a politically acceptable way, i.e., he will be able to go back to the center and the right and say, hey, you saw all those demonstrations, i HAD to do that liberal thing, even if i didn't want to.

THAT's the way a popular president needs to operate, and that's how fdr worked his magic. to the center and the moderate right, he was one of them, just doing extraordinary things in extraordinary circumstances, he wasn't a socialist by nature, he was just doing what he needed to do because of the nature of the economic situation and because of all the clamoring for government help from the left.

to the far right, of course, he was an evil commie, but of course you can't be all things to all people.

personally, i'd rather have obama have the image of a centrist, pragmatist, who we can bend to our causes while being acceptable to the rest of the country, than have obama overly identified with the left and rendered less popular and less effective as a result.



now, in an ideal world, a self-identified leftist would be immensely popular across the board, but that's not the reality we live in, at least not yet. in the meanwhile, our best bet is to MAKE OBAMA DO what we want him to do.

create the circumstances in which obama has no choice but to give us what we want.