President Obama claims a number of accomplishments, but some are like finally agreeing to bring US troops home from Iraq. His Defense Secretaries tried hard to keep them there.
Obama can also claim rescinding Don't Ask Don't Tell; he touts his flawed healthcare law and rescuing the economy from collapse, even though the subsequent recovery is like a depression. He hasn't yet raised taxes on the highest incomes, but insists they need to be, not lowered as Republicans demand
How would Obama see himself? I'll bet his greatest disappointment is that despite all his efforts to promote a more civil politics of centrist good sense, his opponents hate him and are doing everything they can to defeat his re-election bid. He also knows that it's not only partisan; it's also racial, plus the Senate and Congress are bought and paid for by the biggest bucks on the planet.
He must love to hear about the sorry parade of Republican candidates, their mishaps and stupidities, but he must grind his teeth to hear Fox's commentators falsifying what's actually happening.
He may, finally, be getting it: he will never reach agreements with Republicans, unless it's to tie the noose around his neck. Boehner and McConnell are subtle, but, secretly, they wish they could lynch this uppity black man.
Why has Obama actually intensified the war in Afghanistan and the drone war over Pakistan? The military and Hillary were for the surge; Biden was for the drone war and against the surge. So, compromise! Have both!
I wonder if Obama credits himself that they got bin Laden: probably. Hillary joked about it. The Republicans try to claim that it only happened because of what George W did before, but they're wrong; Bush closed the bin Laden Section; Obama reopened it.
Obama is a disappointment: he tried to compromise, tried to be the "adult" in the middle, instead of the leftish statesman he projected on the campaign trail. He had progressive ideas, but he's probably more conservative than Nixon, "our last liberal President." Every Republican, however, is to the right of Hoover and even of Coolidge, or Taft.
Yet, it's not at all clear that the majority of Americans are conservative, even many self-identified as such. Most are like the tea partier whose sign shouted: 'Keep your hands off my Medicare', what they want demands liberal, not conservative policies. Except for the crazy religious, most are also socially liberal: hence the abolition of Don't Ask, and the spread of same-sex marriage.
Maybe Obama represents them better than he realizes, in these last years of a tired, crazy, polarized Empire, How many years until the re-play of 476, when the Barbarians took possession of bankrupt Imperial Rome? If Obama is reelected, we'll have a slightly better chance of avoiding that scenario: the Barbarians could be Chinese bankers.
From: MilitaryEducation.org
No comments:
Post a Comment