what are barack obama's flaws?

yeah i thought that westen piece was okay but for an essay ostensibly about politics it didnt seem very interested in the specifics of the last couple years

i dunno the whole "if only he had tried harder wed have [a bigger stimulus/the public option]" counterfactual will never go away, obviously.

i tend to think that the difference in terms of actual policy--if obama had been more vocal--would probably be minimal. but i think he *should* be making arguments, using the bully pulpit, etc., more frequently, just to make everyone feel better.

but i think he *should* be making arguments, using the bully pulpit, etc., more frequently, just to make everyone feel better.

i wonder to what extent people would feel better , even if things were going the exact same way, if obama was explicitly calling out the GOP on their shit - calling every deal a half-cooked deal, making more of those 'we wouldn't be a good country w/o it' defences of welfare, chiding repubs for obstructionism &c.

i agree with max. his silence created a vacuum redneck pundits occupied a long time ago and own now. the whole white house communication team sucks. i think they've played this like stuck up types who can't be bothered to convince jane six-pack and johnny reb that republican policies are fucking them over

One Elias Isquith's response:

I like your work, Andrew, but this is not a good rebuttal. I don't want to go through it point by point as you did Westen because I know that a blog post is not quite a dissertation and thus the truth can be obscured sometimes with an overzealous focus on detail.

I'm just going to say that block-quoting disparate moments in which Obama, in dry, technocratic, and professorial language, lays out the reasoning for his policies (which, certainly in the case of loaning capital to banks on the theory that they'll send it back to Main St. with the "multiplier effect" has been proven to be wrong) is not at all a refutation of Westen's central critique: Obama did not tell succinct, easily transferable, and repeated stories. You're a smart man and an often able blogger, so I find it somewhat baffling that you think a long, bloodless summing-up after a 5-hour health care reform summit (that precious few people watched) is somehow the equivalent of what Westen's looking for. This is absurd.

Otherwise, I don't understand why you feel the need to so passionately and with some pique denounce Westen for making observations as to the personal and political motivations of Obama's moves as of late. It's not significantly different from what you or countless other bloggers have done; most definitely, to call it "character assassination" for Westen to reach the conclusion that Obama is playing for the independent vote (when there have been many articles, most notably the recent effort from Elizabeth Drew in the NYRB, with sources saying exactly the same) is to define-down "character assassination" to such a degree as to render it a meaningless aspersion.

I sympathize with your desire to protest against what you see as unfair attacks on the President; but for all your talk of good faith, I don't think you approached Westen's (admittedly imperfect) piece with quite as much grace and levity as this post would imply.

obama's biggest flaw is probably being a war criminal

nobody's perfect

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkjm3eSssu1qb7ss5o1_400.jpg

replace with Boehner and Obama faces

and he has a terrible vert. that's a huge hole in his bball game

even if things were going the exact same way, if obama was explicitly calling out the GOP on their shit

This doesn't compute to me. If he was terming their shit as such, he presumably wdn't be able to swallow it.

But re the Times, the problem isn't that he lacks passion, it's that he's just another asshole.

lol that blog post:

Westen stoops to unfounded allegations about character and motive that almost amount to character assassination: Obama's stories lack villains because he has to keep raising campaign dollars

a heinous accusation!

i do think the western article is kinda garbage

“Westen’s op-ed rests upon a model of American politics in which the president is the not only the most important figure, but his most powerful weapon is rhetoric. The argument appears calculated to infuriate anybody with a passing familiarity with the basics of political science. In Westen’s telling, every known impediment to legislative progress — special interest lobbying, the filibuster, macroeconomic conditions, not to mention certain settled beliefs of public opinion — are but tiny stick huts trembling in the face of the atomic bomb of the presidential speech. The impediment to an era of total an uncompromising liberal success is Obama’s failure to properly deploy this awesome weapon.”

http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2011/08/08/mischaracterizing-fdr-to-indict-obama/

"total and uncompromising liberal success" vs what we have sounds like classic ILX binary

Many of the signal liberal accomplishments of the New Deal were not initiated by FDR; in several cases, the president came to reluctantly embrace policies that social movements on the left and liberal advocates in Congress forced onto the agenda.

hmmmmmmmm

well, there's our solution, I don't know why we didn't think of it before.

bcuz you were too busy putting obama at the center of your discontent

of the hundreds in power I am discontented with, he's been the most worshipped.

(or, here, save-an-O'd)

3/10

this is the center of our discontent

well, there's our solution, I don't know why we didn't think of it before.

― satan club sandwich (Dr Morbius), Monday, August 8, 2011 3:41 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3

While FDR’s inaugural did include salvos against the “unscrupulous money changers,” his actual policies in his first term relied heavily on cooperation with the business community. The NRA —which FDR hailed as the most important recovery measure—essentially allowed businesses to form cartels, under the friendly supervision of the pro-business Hugh Johnson. Many of the signal liberal accomplishments of the New Deal were not initiated by FDR; in several cases, the president came to reluctantly embrace policies that social movements on the left and liberal advocates in Congress forced onto the agenda.

Indeed, during FDR’s first three years in office, his version of the New Deal faced more serious challenges from populists and insurgents on the left than from Republicans. Far from the bold, unyielding advocate fighting off conservative resistance, the FDR of the first New Deal was navigating between competing ideological camps, attempting to build a broad, all-class alliance. Indeed, FDR was always surrounded by teams of advisers with widely divergent views of the government’s role and he kept them—and the public—guessing about which side he was really on.

This is true and worth repeating. But thanks to his uncommon shrewdness – with the exception of the court-packing battle he always read public opinion accurately – he was able to sign Glass-Steagall, Social Security, and the other liberal achievements we celebrate. I haven't yet seen this kind of shrewdness in Obama although I'm willing to be convinced.

Alfred you don't get it at all. Its not shrewdness, its unions

The unions were weak until the FDR administration empowered them (e.g. The National Labor Relations Board, Wagner Act, etc)!

Yes but the labor movement is what pushed for that, not fdr, there is no comparable movement today

I agree

this is the same deej who months ago said obama's biggest failing was his "messaging"?

Thats hardly contradicting the argument he made bro

A thorough analysis of the Cabinet and extra-Cabinet officers Obama has hired, sacked, or marginalized.

that's a great article. particularly this entry:

2. Karl Eikenberry: Commander of Combined Forces in Afghanistan before he was made ambassador, Eikenberry, a retired Lieutenant General, had seniority over both Petraeus and then war commander General Stanley McChrystal when it came to experience in that country and theater of war. He was the author of cables to the State Department in late 2009, which carried a stinging rebuke to the conduct of the war and unconcealed hostility toward any new policy of escalation. The Eikenberry cables were drafted in order to influence the White House review that fall; they advised that the Afghan war was in the process of being lost, that it could never be won, and that nothing good would come from an increased commitment of U.S. troops.

Petraeus, then Centcom commander, and McChrystal were both disturbed by the cables -- startled when they arrived unbidden and intimidated by their authority. Obama, astonishingly, chose to ignore them. This may be the single most baffling occasion of the many when fate dealt a winning card to the president and yet he folded. Among other such occasions: the 2008-2009 bank bailouts and the opening for financial regulation; the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the opportunity for a revised environmental policy; the Fukushima nuclear plant meltdowns and a revised policy toward nuclear energy; the Goldstone Report and the chance for an end to the Gaza blockade. But of all these as well as other cases that might be mentioned, the Eikenberry cables offer the clearest instance of persisting in a discredited policy against the weight of impressive evidence.

Ambassador Eikenberry retired in 2011, and Obama replaced him with Ryan Crocker -- the Foreign Service officer brought into Iraq by Bush to help General Petraeus manage the details and publicity around the Iraq surge of 2007-2008.

A commentary excerpt on Republican responses to the news in Libya and Republican views of Obama flaws:

Indeed, with the Republican Party wedded to a contradictory image of the president as foreign policy weakling and iron-fisted domestic dictator, we’re going to see a lot of bizarre rationalizing of what happened in an attempt to preserve this narrative of the Obama presidency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-rights-bizarre-response-to-libya-events/2011/03/04/gIQAPprNWJ_blog.html

taibbi on the feds leaning on ny ag eric schneiderman ~

But it seems to me that it might be time to wonder if is this the most disappointing president we’ve ever had.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/obama-goes-all-out-for-dirty-banker-deal-20110824

that wasn't really my takeaway from that article - we talked about it in the politics thread already anyway

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/guest-post-obama-team-feared-revolt-if-he-prosecuted-war-crimes.html

"Republican revolt" averted, whew

he's Cheney

ohh

http://images.wikia.com/wikiality/images/6/6e/Evilcheney.jpg

well, you know

http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/30/awlaki_6/singleton/

i don't know how gradually it happened, or whether it was always this way, but the subject lines of e-mails sent from the democrats/barackobama.com have become indistinguishable from maudlin, spurned post-break-up e-mails

Wish the top of this thread read "What are Barack Obama's Flaws?", followed by "See all 1923 of them."

i don't know how gradually it happened, or whether it was always this way, but the subject lines of e-mails sent from the democrats/barackobama.com have become indistinguishable from maudlin, spurned post-break-up e-mails

plz post examples! are they like "I Know We Can Try"?

I Don't Know What to Do with My Bombs

dying

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com It doesn't need to be this way

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com How this dinner thing works

Jim Messina, BarackObama.com Here's the story

"how this dinner thing works" actually made me lol

open the email & it's just http://images.mirror.co.uk/upl/m4/jan2009/6/0/CA6C33D3-E6A4-B0C1-C7DEDDF9319709BE.jpg