just found this rebuttal to Jonathon Chait's NYT Mag's piece yesterday taking the leftist critics of Barack Obama to task for "magical thinking".... there was plenty of commentary on yesterday's diary by seanwright:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I'll post the lede and the conclusion, go visit Scarecrow's essay and let's have it.
I suppose we should be grateful that TNR’s Jonathan Chait voluteered to write an apologia for President Obama as a way to explain to those he identifies with “the left” why Obama’s not such a bad President and to remind the “left” there were extenuating circumstances that explain the President’s failure, or refusal, to achieve what the left wanted and the country needed.
But one has to wonder: is Chait’s defense all the President’s supporters have left? Because when Chait leaves out what really matters to Obama’s liberal critics, the piece comes off as an argument for Obama’s announcing “I shall not seek, and I will not accept . . .”
To assess the President’s performance, one must start with a more coherent story of what Obama and the country faced in January 2009 and what those conditions called for after eight disastrous years of the Bush presidency. Some of us said both before and after the election that the devastation wrought by Bush on the Constitution, on the idea of government, on the rule of law and on the economy was so crippling and massive, it would likely take years to reverse it. But some things were clearly priorities and needed to be addressed immediately.
The close:
So I have to wonder if Chait is serious, whether he and the White House believe this is a credible defense of President Obama. Chait either doesn’t know, or chose to ignore the many and far more serious reasons why liberals/progressives are in varying stages of disappointment, dismay, disgust or outright contempt for this President. But I should have suspected a lack of seriousness when Chait’s piece gave us this:
The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s.
Does he really believe that?
Scarecrow's article: http://my.firedoglake.com/...