I just finished reading a new column by Drew Westen, that is excellent, and a must read. Once again, he perfecting describes my own feelings about a young President, that I would follow into the depths of hell, if he would just LEAD.
Mr. Westen, also thanks and acknowledges the great work being done here on DailyKos, for the recent diary done on Mr. Westen, amazing articulation (over a year ago), on very specific reasons President Obama is losing his base, and could indeed be a very mediocre one term President.
More's the pity, we all had such great hopes for our President and for our own Democratic Party that is lost in a wilderness, and that has all but abandoned it's own original party platform.
For his part, from his post-election press conference through his appearance on 60 Minutes through his inexplicable decision to jet off to Asia in a way that seemed to underscore to the American people his disinterest in both their domestic concerns and the feelings they had just expressed at the ballot box, the president once again illustrated three interrelated hallmarks of his presidency: his ability to endorse nearly every side of an issue, his inability or unwillingness to articulate (whether to the American people or perhaps, more importantly, to himself) any governing philosophy or core set of principles that inform his decisions (e.g., a progressive alternative to the Reagan mantra of "government is the problem, not the solution"), and his allergy to leadership, particularly if it means dealing with conflict or aggression from his political opponents. Over the course of the couple of days he stuck around America long enough to take both sides of the issue, President Obama made clear that he will oppose tax cuts for anyone but the middle class but on the other hand might be willing to extend the Bush tax cuts to the rich, perhaps for a couple years. Like his decision a year and a half ago to cut the stimulus and lard it up with tax cuts the prior eight years had proven to be inert in creating jobs -- a decision that just cost Democrats the House, by "proving" to the American people the uselessness of an economic stimulus and of government more generally -- extending the Bush tax cuts to millionaires would be both bad public policy and bad politics, as all available data suggest that any extension of tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires would be deeply unpopular with voters, who expressed more than anything else their angry populism last Tuesday. The president's differing opinions on whether he believes this is a good area for compromise with congressional Republicans was reminiscent of his various speeches on the importance of deficit spending while cutting the deficit, or his major energy speech on why we have to tackle climate change while expanding oil shale (perhaps the dirtiest, most energy-inefficient fuel ever explored), "clean coal" (which sounds great in West Virginia and would be even better if it existed), and offshore oil drilling (not exactly the most prescient moment in a speech made just two weeks before the BP disaster).
snip....
After watching the returns Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, happy to be in a hotel with a sorely needed mini-bar, I had intended to dissect the president's role in this election upon returning home to write this piece at the end of the week. Then on Friday I received an email from a blogger at the DailyKos, telling me that a piece I had written had just drawn nearly a thousand responses. Wondering if I'd made one too many trips to the mini-bar while away (because I couldn't recall having written anything since a CNN.com op-ed on election night), I checked out the DailyKos to see what he was referring to and found an excerpt and a link to a piece I had published here nearly a year ago. As I read it, I realized it was probably a better postmortem than anything I could write today, for two reasons. First, at the time, it expressed a view many people -- whether toward the center or the left -- were starting to feel but not yet articulating or feeling comfortable articulating in print. Today, as I read it, it almost seems mainstream. Second, it is easy to dismiss a postmortem of an election as post-hoc, written with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. But it's a lot harder to dismiss a postmortem written a year before the election returns, which in American politics is an eternity.
So below is the unvarnished article from December 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
I keep wondering when all that 'Fired Up and Ready To Go' when up into smoke. President Obama, wants to be all things to all people, but leadership never works that way: never. His unwillingness to define any governing philosophy or core set of principals that inform his decisions, consistently undermines his Presidency, as does his unwillingness to use confrontation as a necessary tool, to resolve disagreements with the Republicans. He stands in the shadows, somehow believing that his unwillingness to define himself as a leader is smart politics, when it fact, it is the opposite of smart politics.
This is why the Republicans have been able to consistently steal the narrative, and why President Obama's useless Public Relations team, should have been replaced from day one.
If the President refuses to define his core beliefs, and who and what he stands for as the head of the Democratic Party, then the resulting confusion (like a ship without a rudder), will continue to lead to the basic ugly truth that seems to be staring the party faithful in the face: He's not fighting for the Middle Class, because he never intended to in the first place, and he's no different than any other Blue Dog Democratic, who are simply Republican lite. As Mr. Westen states, President Obama's allergy to leadership, has worn very very thin and I hope before it is too late, (and we end up with somebody like Haley Barbour or Mike Huckabee, or even worse Sarah Palin for President in 2012) our President finally steps up to the plate, and defines himself as a leader, and decides once and for all, who he is, and what he stands for, and who he intends to represent: The lost and disappearing Middle Class, or the continued Oligarchy madness, that is fully destroying our entire nation and society.
Thanks as always,
Ms. B.