Obama: Ordinary Politician

The American people have been betrayed. An election stolen; a popular election and a surge of hope: hope disappointed; another election bought.

Obama perpetuates the failing policies of the past: he depends on "experts" from the past. While he could give inspirational speeches as a candidate, he's a pedagogue as President, rarely a fighter. He went from talking about changing the dialogue, to repeating it.

Obama is now going to cut (government) workers wages to trim the deficit, while unemployment is high and borrowing is dirt-cheap. Wage-cuts will slow down the economy further, increasing the deficit. He's talking about "compromising" with Republicans, by caving in on continuing tax cuts to the over $250,000 crowd. That would add $700 billion to the deficit, but few jobs.

He signed a health care bill, but like Medicare Part D, signed by W, it caters to the needs of the health care industry far more than patients, and provides no alternative to private health insurance; he could have pushed for the public option but Rahm Emmanuel persuaded him otherwise. "Reform" will give insurers huge new markets, subsidized by Uncle Sam.

He did sign a New Start treaty that cuts nuclear weapons, but his timid, transactional politics, reinforced by the Senate Democratic leadership, makes it unlikely to be ratified in this Congress; it won't be in the next.

Has he gotten us out of wars? Obama campaigned against Iraq, but we're still in it: our military is angling to stay after the 2011 treaty cut-off negotiated by Bush! And we're in up to our ears in Afghanistan--now until 2014. And Pakistan, and--the torturers are unpunished, and Guantanamo still has inmates.

Obama campaigned on the need for an international agreement on climate change, deploring Bush's rejection of Kyoto. He went to Copenhagen empty-handed from Congress (no climate change legislation passed), but he didn't use the EPA's so-far unchallenged mandate to regulate CO2 as leverage. So, no agreement was reached, just a handshake on the "we'll try to reduce emissions," mantra.

Then there's the deficit commission. Obama appointed advocates for dismantling Social Security and Medicare. So, of course, the co-chairs propose cutting Social Security, not raising the cap to better finance it, and cutting Medicare, not restructuring health care so we can pay for it.

Obama hasn't even challenged the false notion that Social Security contributes to the deficit; it doesn't. Instead, he tries to co-opt Republican anxiety about deficit spending, while millions are without jobs, or homes, and the economy is stuck. The nation needs a huge public works/public jobs program, not deficit-cutting: not until unemployment is slashed.

Obama is hardly a reformer like Emperor Majorian. Despite his rhetoric, he is a lesser Emperor, like Glycerius, creature of Generals and Senators, two years before the fall of Rome.