Republicans are expected to dish out a constant stream of criticism of anything and everything President Obama says, doesn’t say, does and doesn’t do. But what about the Democrats, the members of his own party, his so-called supporters?
President Clinton’s former foreign policy adviser Bruce Reed tells the Democrats to quit their sniveling. President Obama has been doing a darn good job, he says, despite the non-support of his make-believe supporters.
To summarize:
Two Republicans demanded Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s resignation; Democrat Rep. Peter DeFazio made the same demand on MSNBC the day before. They must have met in the cloak room.
Environmental activist Bill McKibben accused the President of lying about climate change.
Journalist and writer William Greider said Obama “has ‘troubling’ similarities to Hoover.”
Maureen Dowd claimed he should be more like Sarah Palin.
Huffington Post commentator Paul Abrams accuses Geithner of being “Obama’s Rumsfield.”
Arianna charged Geithner and Larry Summers of “turning unemployment into ‘Obama’s Katrina,’”
"In a Daily Beast post called ‘Amateur Hour at the White House,’ Les Gelb insisted that Obama's Asian trip was such a failure that the president should shake up his national security team and "take responsibility himself, as President Kennedy did after the Bay of Pigs fiasco."
To his credit, Obama hasn't taken the bait. In October, he joked about his supporters' impatience: "Why haven't you solved world hunger yet? It's been nine months." Like clockwork, a few days later, activists and members of Congress complained that the administration was moving too slowly on world hunger.
I have mixed feelings on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI've said Obama's economic policies are similar to Hoover's myself. Because, well, they are.
The thing is, Roosevelt's economic policies were kind of similar to Hoover's too. Roughly one to two thirds of the New Deal came from Hoover administration programs that had been tried on smaller scale or considered but not implemented. Hoover bailed out the banks, and Roosevelt attempted to continue that policy in a more manageable fashion (much as Obama has done in the wake of Bush's bank bailout.) Candidate Roosevelt was for the bank bailout when Hoover was president, just as Candidate Obama was for the bank bailout when Bush was president.
Arianna Huffington... well... she just likes to complain. When she was a conservative she spent all her time complaining about liberals and now, as a liberal, she spends all her time complaining about liberals. The complaints have changed, is all.
There is some legitimacy to attacks on Geithner and Summers, neither of whom are the kind of people most 'liberals' want to see in a presidential administration. Their corporate/fiscal policy is essentially Republican.
On the other hand, I think that overall Obama has done a good job under the circumstances. I don't know if he'd have done a better job, to this point, by being more 'liberal' or not. I think it was worth a try, personally, but I think trying to throw it all out because we don't like how he's done it is silly.
I do think there is a place for criticism, especially of Geithner and Summers, but I think it needs to be constructive criticism. Whining serves no one and many of my angriest posts after the election were slaps at liberals who were whining that they'd somehow been had because Obama said (essentially) 'vote for me because I'm fairly conservative but liberal when I need to be' and they voted for him because they thought he was liberal as themselves.
Well, I think Reed is simply implying that some of the so-called liberals have a problem with instant gratification and are being extremely childish.
ReplyDeleteHere's his first graph:
"By the time President Obama landed back on American soil last Thursday, politicians on Capitol Hill were beginning to show the effects of a week without adult supervision."
he should be more like Sarah Palin
ReplyDeleteNow, that's a really disturbing thought.
I think there are legitimate criticisms, mostly in the area of his excessive desire for bipartisanship getting in the way of getting things done. From inviting Rick Warren to the inaugural (a completely unnecessary slap in the face to gays) to trying to discourage the Senate from pushing hard for a public option because he wanted one forlorn Republican vote, this has been in evidence.
I do hope it he'll get over it, if only because it's obviously not winning him any brownie points with the right.
Infidel: I couldn't agree with you more. He gave it a good try but it's obvious his opponents are only interested in derailing everyone of Obama's plans. Not only is not winning him any brownie points with the right but not a lot is getting accomplished, or at least that's the way it seems.
ReplyDelete'From inviting Rick Warren to the inaugural (a completely unnecessary slap in the face to gays)...'
ReplyDeleteI don't think Warren should have been at the inaugural either, but I also understand why he was. Warren represents a wave of evangelicals who are 'liberal' on things like welfare and the environment and some Democrats believe they can wedge this group away from the Republican Party on the economic issues.
I don't think they can, because I think bigo... err, faith, trumps economic compassion.
But it is very tempting and I certainly understand the temptation.
'...to trying to discourage the Senate from pushing hard for a public option because he wanted one forlorn Republican vote, this has been in evidence.'
The media is divided on this. The mainstream media sold this story whole-sale and some elements of the liberal media bought into it in a big way. However, many of the actual interviews and speeches show the president trying to push the Finance Committee to a more liberal bill, not hold them back. Do any of us believe the Finance Committee needed 'holding back'?
The White House did oppose the opt-out clause move by Harry Reid... but then so did I. And my reasons for opposing it had nothing to do with being opposed to a public option.
I see what you mean Leslie.
ReplyDelete