Dan Balz writes in the WaPo:
The president's rhetoric over the past week suggests he has decided to try to fight anger with anger. If Americans are fed up with bank bailouts and bonuses going to their top executives, Obama wants people to believe that he resents them just as much.
His fight, fight, fight rhetoric marks a big change in his demeanor. Two years ago in Ohio, as he tried to win the primary against Hillary Rodham Clinton, she was the fighter, carrying the grievances and suffering of Ohio voters on her shoulders. Obama struggled to find his voice on economic issues.
Obama is not a natural populist, even though he once was a community organizer. As a candidate, he was the antithesis of the class warrior. He did not attack bank bailouts when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson warned of an imminent financial system collapse in September 2008. He tried to build some accountability into the Bush administration proposals, but otherwise was an ally of Bernanke and Paulson in that episode.
'Populist' as in 'anti-elitist'? The first definition for populism I found online was "the political doctrine that supports the rights and powers of the common people in their struggle with the privileged elite." Yep, that's right.But populist is a strange word these days; it seems to connote a certain wildeyedness, an irresponsible political movement that could easily become crazed and revolutionary, if one isn't careful.
So why don't we just use instead 'progressive'? Because when I call myself a progressive, that's what I mean--fighting for the common person against the power and privilege of the economic elite.
Now some would argue that that is an unfair perception. But we who see it this way don't think it's unfair but accurate, unfortunately. Most of us desperately wish it not to be true, but we think it is. Obama has proven himself to be more of a Clintonite, neo-liberal, interventionist, corporate Democrat than he is a progressive Democrat. And unfortunately, the split in the party is very real.
Were there signs of this during the election? Yes, there probably were, though not to the extent that some might think. But on the whole, Obama's campaign rhetoric was progressive, though often lacking specifics as is so common in campaigns. Furthermore, his background of international experience as a child, his parental radicalism, his years as a community organizer instead of either politics or business, his sensitivity to the issues of Black people, his cultural sophistication, his literary talent, and his early and unusual opposition to the Iraq war--all of these things led many of us to believe that, in his heart, he was a progressive Democrat rather than a neo-liberal, corporate Democrat.
Perhaps we deceived ourselves. That might be so, because I wanted so badly someone who would come and try to lead this country, not back to the 90's, but forward into some new and different. I thought he was the one to do that.
But it appears we were wrong. And I don't know what we can do about it. I don't dislike him as a person, in fact I like him about as much as I did Bill Clinton in that way (and much more than I like Hillary as a person). And I will always be proud of the fact that America elected its first African-American president.
All that being said, I'm just mad as hell at him and his advisors and his policies in so many areas, especially his Bush-lite interventionist foreign policy and his corporatist economic and financial sector policy.
Can he change? Will he change? I have no idea. But I'm skeptical--even cynical--toward his change in words and rhetoric until I see the fruit in changed policies. He has earned my distrust, and now he's going to have to earn my trust. We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment