[quote=afx114]Very good point eavesdropper. But you make it sound as if getting those passed were a cakewalk due to the Democratic majority. Are you arguing that they should have been easier to pass? In hindsight, perhaps they should have been. But it’s clear that they were battles. Were they battles due to the president’s political inexperience, or were they battles because the Dems, while a single group, are a diverse coalition of interests, much more so than the Reps? Is a president’s performance based on how many of the opposite party he can bring on board or is it based on the overall ability to bring diverse interests together to get shit done? We can also refer to the Obameter for some insight: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
No doubt the true test will be when he doesn’t have a majority. And based on what we’ve seen from the Reps so far, it doesn’t look like he will get much help from them. However, there could be more pressure on them to actually get stuff done since their votes will actually matter this time.
Time will tell.[/quote]
Afx: Did you happen to watch “Real Time with Bill Maher” last night? I ask because Cornel West, a man with whom I’d ordinarily have no truck, was on and in full voice. Jonathan Alter of Newsweek was also there, discussing his new book, “The Promise”, which details Obama’s first year.
West, needless to say, is NOT a conservative, nor is he a Republican, but he went after Obama with a vengeance last night. His criticisms were not picayune, by the way, but the criticisms of a student of political history and a black man.
What really captured my attention was him lambasting Obama for essentially lying to his adherents (note I didn’t say constituents) in order to gain office, and then abandoning them and becoming just another political operator.
A consistent, and I believe valid, criticism of Obama has been that he is just another Chicago pol, and a product of that system of patronage, wheeling and dealing, and cronyism.
While I take your point about the Dems being very individualistic as a party, I also think Obama never figured out how to get them to cohere as a broad-based coalition seeking common goals (the lack of statesmanship that West lamented) and I think the promise he offered to the great swathe of middle class America evaporated after his election, and people came to see that the sweeping oratory was just that: Words.
True or not, the Gulf spill is now Obama’s. I personally don’t think its true, but that’s the nature of politics. Bush was taken from pillar to post over Katrina, while the failings of the local and state first responders were never discussed. FEMA is NOT a first responder and never has been, and the same group that expected the federal government to fix Katrina is now expecting the same for the Gulf spill.
