The disparity between my expectations of the Obama presidency and the reality of it is vast indeed. But I'm not going to focus here on explaining the multiple ways I'm disappointed. Instead, I'm going to share my theory about why I think president Obama has turned out to be different than what I (and millions of other people) expected.
Before I proceed, I want to allay the fears some readers may have after reading the introduction, that this diary is going to be yet another "attack" on president Obama. It is not, and that is not my intention.
Here's my take... When it comes to real power, the president is a figure head. The real power behind the throne is made up of a corporate hegemony that controls all the important levers. Hence, the State (to a great extent) serves, first and foremost, the interests of this corporate hegemony, which in reality makes our system of government a Corporatocracy. (I'm adding George Carlin's poignant "observation" about this at the end of the diary to accentuate this point).
This system has been gaining strength and has become more entrenched during the years, as the corporate hegemony consolidates its hold on all the levers of power.
This situation is actually not uncommon in historical terms. It actually describes the status quo throughout most of human civilization, where you have a very small group of powerful people ruling over the citizenry through deception, exploitation, and oppression.
If you read carefully many of the writings by the Founding Fathers (and many other thinkers afterwards), they were almost obsessed with the possibility that the populace would be unable to avoid the rise of tyranny in the future.
Now, by the time the president won the 2008 election, the takeover of all the important levers of power by the corrupt corporate hegemony was almost total.
One important aspect of this takeover includes the ability of the Corporatocracy to influence public opinion through propaganda, and by virtually destroying the public education foundation in the country.
So this means that there is a very large segment of the population that is completely infused with very odious and debased attitudes, which are the result of the exposure to a relentless amount of misinformation and propaganda. To verify this, all a sensible reader would have to do is try having a conversation with a teabagger. Or examine the dangerously-clownish, hate-filled, and ignorance-loving attitudes shared by the current Republican presidential field.
Even though there is a large segment of the population (Occupy, progressives, etc.) trying to right the ship of state, in reality it is not large enough to be representative of the real power structure of the country.
The real power structure (the system) is basically utterly corrupt, debased, exploitative, and immoral, and again, this reality results from the fact that a group of people sharing those characteristics have been able to take over the levers of power.
If this is true (and, of course, I argue that it is), then it is almost impossible for a president to bring about the type of change needed to fix the country. The corruption and depravity, and greed in much of our system is so deep, the time that took to get to this point so long, and the fascistic infrastructure put in place to protect such system so entrenched, that there is no man on earth that could come in as a new president an turn things around quickly enough.
After having observed the president very intently, and after having read his books, and heard his speeches, my conclusion is that he is probably one of the smarter presidents in this country's history.
If so, I'm going to allow for the possibility that there is something I'm missing about his "strategy" for fixing the country.
Yes, if it was up to me, and I was president for a day, I would have fired all the Wall Street banksters from government, and instead would have directed the Justice Department to not leave any stone unturned when it came down to criminally prosecuting their crimes; I would have directed the Justice Department to investigate corruption, crimes against humanity, torture, war crimes, criminal war profiteering, that were apparently rampant during the Bush administration... On and on. You get the picture.
But that can only happen in a decent country. I don't mean this to offend the readers. This country has millions and millions of decent citizens, but overall, we are not a decent country, for the reasons I describe above. Because all the levers of power have been taken over by indecent people.
Within this context, it is possible that president Obama understands the challenge at hand, and understands that it will take at least two presidential terms to start righting the ship of state.
If he understands that the real powers are Wall Street moneyed interests, and the military industrial complex, along with the totally corrupt Congress, and federal agencies, and he tries to take them on, he may have concluded that doing so too prematurely would be fatal for his presidency, and for any chance of making things right. And this would be especially true for a new (young) president.
And so by appearing to go along with the program (appointing Wall Street banksters to important positions), and not taking on the (frothing at the mouth) military industrial complex war profiteers just yet, he may have bought himself some time to get his footing.
Also, because the drumbeat of propaganda against him (calling him socialist, etc.) is so overwhelming, he may have calculated that at this point he needed to seem extremely reasonable and accommodating, not to us, his constituencies, liberals, progressives, sane people, but to the crazies, reactionaries, ignorant-loving, and so-called "independents."
This situation creates a lot of disappointment and disillusionment on the Left, but at the end, it may be the only path in an eight-year strategy.
By the president seeming to be extremely reasonable, accommodating, and willing to compromise, it then confounds the Right-wing forces and the Corporatocracy, forcing them to push harder and harder, which eventually forces them to overplay their hand.
If they do so to the extreme, then this may be enough to get the attention of a large-enough segment of the population to give the president the majorities he needs in Congress during the 2012 elections.
And if that happens--if he gets strong majorities in Congress--then he may be able to set the stage for the necessary correction we need to make. This, of course, would include appointments to the Supreme Court, strengthening the regulatory framework against dangerous accumulation of wealth and power, enacting legislation focused on cleaning up our current corrupt campaign finance system, helping stimulate the economy, taxing the rich and the corporations, etc.
Again, if it was up to somebody like me, Bush and Cheney and Condoleezza Rice would be in prison, or facing charges of crimes against humanity at an international level, and countless Wall Street banksters would be serving hard time in prison. Or maybe not.
Maybe, a young president trying to do those things within the confines of a totally corrupt (but powerful) system would have been stopped on his tracks if he acted too soon.
But I'm just a regular Joe-six-pack, and I recognize that I'm obviously not as smart as he is, and so I may not have the benefit of understanding all the considerations at play.
Finally, this is jut a theory. I'm also opened to the idea that we were hoodwinked in 2008 with inspirational rhetoric, and that presidents will continue to the the bidding of the Corporatocracy.
I'll be fine-tuning this theory as we move closer to the 2012 election depending of the "facts on the ground."