All right. Let me roll up my sleeves and try this again.
In an earlier diary, Noxious Opposition, I attempted to glean insight into why President Obama is doing what he's doing so that the now-battered coalition that supported his presidential election first time around can thoughtfully calibrate its response for a re-election bid.
In it, I characterized President Obama as overwhelmed and also doing what he prefers to do, namely returning to the formula for success that worked for him in the past: dig in and play by the rules as they are.
The question came up, "Overwhelmed by what?", along with a list of challenges that Obama appears to have avoided:
• Put a large enough spending program in place to address unemployment.
• Cutting defense and increasing taxation.
• Bring troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Close Guantanamo.
• Hold people who ordered and performed torture accountable.
Those are fair expectations of any successor to Bush in the White House. The crises that necessitate those policy prescriptions are jut a few of the circumstances to which I refer.
Were I a better writer, it would have been clear that my short answer is: Barack Obama is overwhelmed by the combination of circumstances and rules as they are.
The Rules As They Are
I'll show you what I mean by this. Name the person who can gain traction with any of those initiatives, given the calcified opposition to them right now. Those directives may be imperative for the country but they are so far outside the mainstream of political possibility that they can't even be properly thought of as middle-of-the-road Democratic ideas anymore. That's how much control we've lost. That's how off the rails our political machinery is right now. And that machinery dictates reality for policy.
I don't imagine that Senator Obama believed this would still be hogtying his agenda as President Obama. But it is. And the fact that it is is what makes it a rule.
It will do the same to President Obama during his second term, or to whomever replaces him in the Oval Office if Obama isn't re-elected. It sucks but those are the rules--as they are. And pray for us, because only some politicians from one viable national party are likely to think that may be a bad thing for the country.
"So, use the bully pulpit!" I've joined that chorus. But when I step back to evaluate Obama, it's clear: it is just not in his temperament. I can't find a clear instance where it has ever been his temperament and I honestly believe most Americans elected him for that very reason. He's the personification of reasonable, good-natured, and conciliatory. A majority of voters liked it then, and they still like it now. No matter how painful the policies get, a majority of the polity still keeps indicating they want compromise. So that, too, is a rule.
We are in a terrible bind. All of us, including the president.
No matter who we put in the Oval Office, we going to continue down this road until we've pulled the rug out from under this rigged game on the ground floor.
That means we've got to start with our wallets. Buy "progressive toothpaste" or start brushing with baking soda. No more doing business with companies that are going to turn our own hard-earned money against us. It means we have to fight to elect better representatives, of course. It means we need to start supporting progressive change organizations, en masse, or at least refusing to step in the way when others are attempting to advance progressive causes that we may not be passionate about. And it means that we don't let ourselves get so disappointed or furious that we gift power back to our noxious opposition out of vengeance or by default.
Obama is not doing what he's doing because he's an Oscar worthy con artist. He does not want to hurt his coalition of support. We keep taking hits because American voters have their hearts set on compromise and our opposition has become so rabid that they are threatening their representatives with grievous bodily harm if they give an inch.
Our opposition hates us that bad. They hate everything we stand for that bad. They do not want to govern with Democrats, liberals or progressives. Hell, they don't want to share the country with Democrats liberals or progressives. It is that serious. And they've managed to overtake a national party's agenda.
Do not leave the field to our opponents and do not fight from anger.
1:58 AM PT: On both of these diaries, now, I've basically been accused of lumping progressive and liberal critics in with conservatives and Republicans as "noxious opposition." As an often vociferous critic of Obama's administration that insult simply cannot find its way into my writing because I am certain I am not, and never have been, Obama's problem. Neither do I think fellow liberal and progressive critics are harming Obama in airing their righteous objections.
As the insult is nowhere in my writing, or my heart, I'm going to chalk the frosty reaction to these diaries up to people needing to remain in the mindset of resistance to any further compromises that damage Obama's base.
I get the need to stand firm and shout it out proud. I did it myself with FISA, the inaction on torture prosecution and the virtual rewrite of the Democratic Party's platform on reproductive freedom to get health care reform passed. I know the intention is good and I will not horn in on the effort to kill momentum.
If, on the other hand, the frosty reaction has something to do with me personally, I hope somebody will man up and tell me what godawful way I've done people here wrong or become so suspect as to deserve being ostracized.
Like I said, though, I'll presume it's the former until informed otherwise and work on being more sensitive on timing in the future.