what are barack obama's flaws?

and by "funny" i mean "entirely predictable"

what if you had an estate and nobody cared

hadn't read that hertzberg piece yet. this is dead on ~
"As for 'the American people' themselves, it seems clear enough that their rejection of the Democrats was, above all, an expression of angry anxiety about the ongoing economic firestorm. Though ignited and fanned by an out-of-control financial industry and its (mostly) conservative political and intellectual enablers, the fire has burned hottest since the 2008 Democratic sweep. By the time the flames reached their height, the arsonists had slunk off, and only the firemen were left for people to take out their ire on. The result is a kind of political cognitive dissonance. Frightened by joblessness, 'the American people' rewarded the party that not only opposed the stimulus but also blocked the extension of unemployment benefits. Alarmed by a ballooning national debt, they rewarded the party that not only transformed budget surpluses into budget deficits but also proposes to inflate the debt by hundreds of billions with a permanent tax cut for the least needy two per cent. Frustrated by what they see as inaction, they rewarded the party that not only fought every effort to mitigate the crisis but also forced the watering down of whatever it couldn’t block."
as unfair as it might be, obama has to take the blame for allowing the frame hertzberg outlines to become dominant. the press had his back during the election, when he wasn't shy about calling out the gop and mccain's complicity in the market crash. backing off that message once in office, for whatever reason -- to soothe the markets; to float about the fray; he's not the fighter people thought he was; he doesn't really believe the gop's at fault; he's in the back pocket of the financial industry -- didn't really work out so well

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v32/n22/david-bromwich/the-fastidious-president

That Bromwich editorial is a masterful piece of rhetoric. I find it hard to disagree with its conclusions.

I skimmed a couple of paragraphs, and it does look very good. I wish I could skip to the end of the movie, though. If Obama does manage to turn things around, and leaves office in 2016 with the country in pretty good order and a healthy approval rating, I want to see what all these people who are psycho-analyzing him to death have to say. All the personality traits that are now perceived as negatives, or at least as traits not suited to the presidency--will they then be recast as positives?

Stay tuned at 11 pm.

the conscience of a liberal isn't happy

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/15/opinion/15krugman.html?_r=1&hp

But the real question was whether Mr. Obama could change his tune when he ran into the partisan firestorm everyone who remembered the 1990s knew was coming. He could do uplift — but could he fight?

So far the answer has been no.

the country isn't going to be "in pretty good order" for the rest of its existence.

"Pretty good order" = relatively speaking. Unless you're saying no president will ever again be reelected, which seems highly unlikely.

I don't get the relationship

Well, good enough order to be reelected; i.e., unemployment down to 7% or so, HRC not overturned and starting to function reasonably well, a start in the right direction on the debt and deficit, etc. I'm not saying that all those things will happen, but they could. Paradise? No. But good enough order that Obama could get reelected.

Do you want Obama re-elected?

God knows what this country will look like in a year. Better not to commit yourself in advance.

oh let's not go hankering for order, good lord. we just need some growth. people need something to do, it doesn't really matter what it is

Do you want Obama re-elected?

God, yes--1000% percent. (Noting, yet again, that I'm in Toronto.) Sorry if that makes me politically naive, a dupe, a lapdog, this, that, and the other.

all that socialized medicine must have gotten to you

Well, good enough order to be reelected; i.e., unemployment down to 7%

"I got unemployment back down under 9% and we're back to just fighting "mini-wars" off-the-record. It's been a blast, America. Send your thank you cards to BarackOb✧✧✧@f✧.c✧✧!"

Yes, he really ought to be able to get it down to 5 or 4%--and if he weren't spending so much time on The View and out on the golf course, 2 or 1% wouldn't be out of the question. It's the socialized medicine; it makes us stupid.

He should be gunning for that coveted 0.01% unemployment rate. Put people in labor camps if necessary.

the lrb article is interesting but I think ultimately another exercise on novelistic mind-reading

http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/1116/Obama-s-Of-Thee-I-Sing-hits-bookstore-shelves

i haven't followed us politics closely enough to really evaluate the bromwich/lrb piece but i do find his reading of obama persuasive, as with the nyrb stuff of his i've read

his psychologizing seems to follow from his premise -- obama's failures follow from his preference for a parapolitical abstraction, a disdain for instrumental politics, which is pretty curious and worth investigating

you could say those traits were visible all along, but he seemed cannier than that in the primaries and campaign, whereas now he seems to tolerate people being kinda with and kinda against him

there ought to have been an embargo on any administration official using the word ~bipartisanship~ from the moment they got in the door

Obama didn't help his case by appointing the likes of Geithner and Summers -- it's pretty hard for those paying attention to take seriously any claims of "change we can believe in" when you appoint people who were enablers in the economic shitstorm that's now raging. maybe that inability to turn swine into pearls is a political flaw?!?

if he hadnt appointed ppl who were at least tenuously connected to the business world he would have had an entirely different shitstorm

so?

remember the brouhaha over Geithner's taxes?

Upon giving Medal of Freedom to Poppy Bush:

"Like the remarkable Barbara Bush, his humility and his decency reflects the very best of the American spirit," Obama said of the father of the president he campaigned against so vigorously in 2008. "This is a gentleman."

I wish you gentlemen could get to know each other in The Hague.

"the remarkable Barbara Bush"

i hope he means the daughter.

poppy probably doesn't hold anything against Barry for campaigning against Dumb Son. mama bush, on the other hand, is mean as cat piss.

at least the vicious old cur said Sarahbarbie "should stay in Alaska."

but really, Obama is such a shit, is the topic.

DINNER?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/06/15/obama/index.html

wow, a huge scandal there

it annoyed me cause for half a second I thought it was gonna be some actual friend inviting me to dinner

Though I think it's quite revealing, I don't really have any objection to Obama's efforts to persuade Wall Street and other oligarchs to (once again) fill his coffers with cash. Virtually every politician, especially at this level, is going to troll for money wherever they can get it, if, for no other reason, than to deprive their opponents of that cash. I just don't want to have to once again endure 18 months of the propagandizing (and false) mythologizing conceit that this is some sort of special campaign propelled by plucky, small-donor enthusiasts driving him back to the White House $5 and $10 at a time so that he can stand up on their behalf to special interests.

getting cash from wall street = all politicians do it, no objection
"propaganda" and "mythologizing conceit" = blog post

glenn really needs to stop putting two spaces after his periods

max beat me to the pasting job

you jaded kids and yer 60 favorite Pavement songs

I think a shameless lying fuck trying to be the Change Agent again is balls worth noting, max

I'm glad Greenwald raises these flags, but isn't Obama's mythical aura really a strawman by this point? Other than clemenza on this board, I know no liberal who still thinks Obama deserves admiration.

i got the Dinner? email, but I don't open those

That Obama courts the Wall Street crowd -- a fact obvious since 2007 -- is less offensive to me than his extra-constitutional war-making in Libya and Yemen.

Brunch?

Alfred, have you talked to any libs who arent gonna vote for him?

Drinks?

Kool-Aid for all

Beach?

admiration /= not voting for him. Remember our beloved Billy boy?

you mean cuz he got ppl who don't like blowjobs to vote for him?