Yeah, what I think about that
Obama was almost finished when he finally gave me the clue I was hoping for. It came at the end of the multi-part surprise-troubled-enchanting-humble question.
Humbled by the — humbled by the fact that the presidency is extraordinarily powerful, but we are just part of a much broader tapestry of American life, and there are a lot of different power centers. And so I can’t just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line.
And so, you know, what you do is to — is to make your best arguments, listen hard to what other people have to say, and coax folks in the right direction.
Obama is confessing that he didn’t understand how limited the president’s power is, at least when it comes to changing the status quo. And that’s more or less what I’ve been wondering all spring and late winter long: what forces are holding Obama in check?
All by himself he’s irritated me a few times, but I haven’t gotten pissed yet. Disappointed, sure, but not angry or perplexed. Just the “hold” feeling you get when you know you don’t have enough pieces of the puzzle. Obama may be a centrist, but when you look at what his administration is doing it’s hard to come up with anything approaching a universal label.
But even as the presidency is only one of many power centers engaged in running this country, O is only a part of what’s going on with the left. Not only is the NSA incapable of monitoring all our transmissions, increasingly I doubt they even know how many channels there are.
The cultural zeitgeist looks to be mutating/replicating and I like the energy coming out of the arts community. Lots of little stuff all over the place. People flaunting their talent online instead of secreting it in galleries. Increasingly if you’re getting your fix from cable or dish, you’re missing almost every important trend/manifestation. To paraphrase one of my old talking points, the internet is to the establishment what Radio Free Europe was to the Soviet Union.
I’m amping up my marijuana activism even as I continue to cut O slack on that front. He’s got more than enough serious fights without wasting time on something that should change without a word from him. Besides, right about now I’m thinking a lot of wingnuts wouldn’t mind lighting up something really good at a price that’s not prohibition high so yeah, I think that constituency is about to expand.
But back to the 100 Days thing. No letter grade, that’s juvenile. I’m not thrilled but I am satisfied that progress is being made. I suspect more progress is being made than Obama’s lefty critics realize. The easiest way of getting rid of Bush’s bullshit is to push it through the courts. This Supreme Court isn’t about to let Obama keep the power Bush-Cheney took for themselves, so appealing to higher courts is pretty much what I would expect. I won’t call out the bloggers ripping on Obama over this, but I do think they are for the most part politically clueless. When the Supreme Court strikes down Obama’s power grab, Dick Cheney’s legacy will be ashes.
When everything is busted, you can’t fix everything at once. Or, as Obama pointed out:
I am surprised compared to where I started, when we first announced for this race, by the number of critical issues that appear to be coming to a head all at the same time.
You know, when I first started this race, Iraq was a central issue, but the economy appeared on the surface to still be relatively strong. There were underlying problems that I was seeing with health care for families and our education system and college affordability and so forth, but obviously, I didn’t anticipate the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
And so, you know, the typical president, I think, has two or three big problems. We’ve got seven or eight big problems. And so we’ve had to move very quickly and I’m very proud of my team for the fact that we’ve been able to keep our commitments to the American people, to bring about change, while at the same time managing a whole host of issues that had come up that weren’t necessarily envisioned a year-and-a-half ago.
Troubled? I’d say less troubled, but, you know, sobered by the fact that change in Washington comes slow. That there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we’re in the middle of really big crises.
The politics of governance is radically different than campaign politics. I don’t think we’ve had a liberal president who governed well since LBJ, but Obama seems to get how it works. We’re in good hands, even if progress is slow thanks to bitter enders and garden variety establishment types (Digby’s villagers).
You can read the transcript of Obama’s 100 Days press conference here.
