I don’t know how Rahm got to John Judis:
[T]here is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for–but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.
If you don’t think regulatory issues are important, you need to read Rick Perlstein.
Any Democratic president would have done this, you say? Sure, and that’s part of the point here. The “just as bad as Bush stuff” is just plain wrong.
a1
The Onion: “Cancer patient dead to denied health insurance would have loved improved regulatory apparatus”.
Ajay
I dont think Obama is worse than Bush. Its not even in the same league. Bush was a criminal aided fully by his own administration and by democrats turning a blind eye.
Obama at worst is simply not leading. Sure he is better than Bush but thats really not saying much. He has done some good things but what matters to most is what he has not done, which could have been rather easily done:
– Wars
– Health Care Reform (didnt engage with Senate)
– Not selling his agenda agressively
Even now with 18 seat majority in the senate, the talk out of WH has been that of a defeatist.
The Republic of Stupidity
Does this mean we’re going to get and end to mountain top coal removal?
Ya know, a process that takes a place that used to look like THIS…
And turns it into something that looks like THIS…
WereBear
Yes, exactly.
And why is this so quiet, I wonder?
Have the conservatives maybe gotten it that contaminated spinach, lead-coated toys, and deadly pet food respects no ideologies?
Is this administration hoping this stays under hostile radar?
Are some liberals clueless about the impact of the de-de-regulation?
Or maybe all of the above?
gwangung
@WereBear: Yes. SATSimpleQuestions.
Tom Hilton
I’ve been harping on this for a while now. It amazes and infuriates me that these actions aren’t getting the attention they deserve (from liberals, that is–it’s probably good that they aren’t getting much attention from the right).
But then the liberal blogosphere is so often the very 6-year-old-soccer-game that we love to mock when the news media play it. Food safety, which is vastly important to real live humans, is rarely the issue du jour in the blogosphere.
Just Some Fuckhead
Well thanks for knocking down that strawman. Oh wait, Ward Churchill said it, right?
Napoleon
While I was in law school during the Reagan years I became convinced that it is the thousands of “small” thinks like this that really make the differance in the impact of Dems vs. Rep in the WH. The policy that really made me understand that was Reagan would have his people appeal Social Security decisions that were favorable to claimants left and right but when they would work there way up to an appeals court in a circuit that they thought they would give them an adverse ruling they dropped the appeal, but that didn’t stop them from filing other appeals on other claims in that circuit on the exact same basis. So where once one of the cases reached the circuit court of appeals a ruling could have come down that by law bound all similar case in that circuit, meaning that if the Reagan administration continued to file appeals on whatever basis it was that was (presumably) adversily determined to the administration those appeals would have been clearly in bad faith. So they made sure the circuit appeals court never got the case that would have stopped them from filing thousands of BS challanges to claimants.
The net result was that likely thousands of SS claimants were effectively denied their rightful claims, without the law ever having been changed.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
And Ajay shows exactly the kind of Democrats Obama’s working with. Obama doesn’t feel the need to go in front of the camera for every accomplishment, nor does he feel the need to pass a news camera when he goes and talks to Congress – yes, he actually has been talking to Congress. It’s probably a failing of Obama’s that he’s not spending more time saying touting every thing he does, but I think he’s starting to learn that too, especially after the retreat experience this weekend.
BTW, Ajay, did you hear that the Marines are completely out of combat operations in Iraq?
gwangung
@Just Some Fuckhead: See this “straw man.”
liberty60
Even if you don’t think these efforts are enough to be an improvement over Bush, it at least points out the truly destructive impacts of the conservative ideology. The deregulation that they still faovr was destructive on both the level of its actual impact such as lead coated toys, but also in reinforcing the notion of a magical, self-correcting market.
This is our opportuinty to seize control of the narrative; instead of arguing about how fast or far to deregulate, the Wall Street crash and poisoned spinach type of things allow us to re-introduce the notion of a government that establishes a level playing field, and protects consumers.
Just like reclaiming the title of “progressives” gets us out of the defensive crouch, this takes the battle to them, and forces them to defend practices that are right out of Upton Sinclair.
Lolis
@Ajay:
Obama can’t change the dialogue without any back up from the team. The White House was not defeatist after Scott Brown’s elections, many Democrats in Congress were.
Obama can’t force Democrats to stand up for their values or each other on the Sunday shows. The White House always tries to get its message out but when you have Democrats running against the White House agenda it makes it hard to build momentum against Republicans who are all united.
Catsy
Exhibit A for the issue at hand.
Unless this is satire, you just neatly illustrated exactly the kind of thing that DougJ was calling out as horseshit.
Comrade Dread
The markets are perfectly able to regulate themselves, despite centuries of economic theory and millenia of religious teachings to the contrary.
Somehow when it involves money, men are saints who always make rational decisions that benefit humanity.
MattR
Like many of Obama’s accomplishments, I find these fall into the Chris Rock category of “things you are supposed to do”. I am just not very impressed when a Democratic president does things that I would expect any Democrat to do.
El Cid
I think it’s possible that the Administration might prefer these accomplishments to be among its quieter achievements right now.
gwangung
Then it’s all the more important to make this known and applaud it. Not as a Democratic behavior, but as a competency behavior.
Linking it to Democratic/Republican mindsets is just bad, bad, bad and insures that competent behavior like this is made into a partisan issue like science.
liberty60
@Ajay:
I understand the bully pulpit of the Presidency, but we also need to stop fixating on Obama, as if he and he alone can lead the charge back to sanity.
The battle to reinstate Progressivism, isn’t going to be won by one magical President, no matter how many good people he appoints, or policies he enacts.
We need to work hard at the state and local levels,on issues large and small, and some groups ARE doing this; I belong to the Sierra Club for example, and they are very active at the state and local levels to implement environmentally friendly policies.
Randy P
@liberty60: Why? Who are the other candidates for “sane”?
CalD
Apparently, evil Rahm has also gotten to Norm Ornstein.
The Republic of Stupidity
@Comrade Dread:
Thank you for putting my mind at ease… i was worried about that.
DougJ
Linking it to Democratic/Republican mindsets is just bad, bad, bad and insures that competent behavior like this is made into a partisan issue like science.
Yes and no. I think Perlstein makes a convincing case that it is linked to these mindsets. On other hand, you’re right that this conclusion (though correct) can have negative repercussions. It’s bad that Republicans now openly identify as anti-science and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine them becoming openly anti-competence.
Randy P
@liberty60:
OK, I get what you’re saying. You aren’t looking at other people in DC to stand up for sanity, but for it to come up from the grass roots. I’ll go along with that.
I would have added this to my other comment, but this is one of the days the Edit function is broken. Click on it, nothing happens.
Cathy W
@liberty60: There was a “market-based” response to the food contamination scares of the past few years: people briefly stopped buying Food X altogether (except for maybe ground beef) even when only one brand or one processing plant was implicated in the contamination. I think even the after-the-fact investigations done by the USDA went a long way to reassure people that yes, you can still eat spinach, really and truly, and I don’t think an internal investigation by the company would have had the same effect.
Jamie
The comparison to Bush is silly. Obama is miles ahead of Dubya. That’s the wrong question. The uncertainty is can Obama or anyone else fix the mess Dubya left in D.C.. That still needs to be determined.
Balconesfault
This is my biggest reason for still being an O-bot, despite many frustrations in the last year.
I work in an industry that deals with regulatory agencies all the time, and my wife works for a state environmental agency. It is absolutely clear that the EPA in particular is fully energized in a way we haven’t seen since the Browner years. On some issues (water quality in particular), even more than the Browner years.
Bush unleashed 100000 termites on the Federal Bureaucracy. But the Obama Administration is making incredible progress in a very short time of rebuilding our regulatory apparatus so that it is capable of carrying out the laws that Congress has written.
JasonF
Way, way, way OT, but can anybody point me to a decent voter guide for tomorrow’s Illinois (Democratic) primaries? I’ve been completely unplugged from state politics for the last few months, and while I have some gut instincts on Quinn v. Hynes and Hoffman v. Gianoulias and Stroger v. Everybody Else, I’d love to read up on their positions and policies so I can base my vote on something more than what I’ve picked up through osmosis.
Balconesfault
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Actually – the Marines are completely out of Iraq, period.
And the US military is completely out of combat operations, per the status of forces agreement. That’s why we can have months like December where not one of our soldiers dies in Iraq.
Evolutionary
Anyone who thought Obama was a liberal wasn’t paying attention during the campaign. He is a moderate.
Restoring the regulatory system is moderate (even though the screeching of the rethugs makes the public think otherwise) and I am glad he is doing it.
kay
Form the article:
“More worrisome than the criticisms of activists is the possibility that politics may soon intrude. In 1993, Clinton, too, attempted to revive the regulatory agencies by appointing well-qualified personnel and increasing funding. But, after Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, they managed to cut Clinton’s budget proposals and delay or block the implementation of regulations. If Democrats lose Congress this November, the same thing could happen again. In that case, what has been Obama’s most significant achievement to date would come to naught–and liberals would have yet another reason to despair.”
He can’t beef up any of these regulatory agencies without increased funding from Congress. So far he’s gotten it, but if Congress changes hands he won’t.
Evinfuilt
@Catsy:
Im’ pretty sure he’s serious and not satire. People like that may say “I’m not saying he’s as bad as Bush… but”
They never understand that they’re working hard to put Palin into office, just like Nader did. They don’t understand its not a lesser of two evils, its one is actually EVIL and the other isn’t a Saint.
dan
I’ve been considering unsubscribing from your feed thanks to the tone of this and other posts.
I get it. There are unreasonable people making unreasonable demands on Obama. They crowd out other achievements, and play down the realities that make other achievements difficult.
But there is a big gap between people who say “no better than Bush” and DLC centrists. I just don’t need constant reminder of the extremes.
The tone of this blog is becoming a studied, self-conscious version of the hysterics often criticized here.
joes527
@Ajay:
Alright. Stop right there. You are just objectively wrong.
I’m not at all happy with the way Obama has dealt with Iraqafganistan, but to imagine that resolving them could be “rather easily done” is just stupid.
The wars that we are involved in are fuckups to end all fuckups. Short of inventing a time machine and going back to prevent us from diving in, there are NO answers that would be clearly right. I’d love to shut down the war machine tomorrow, but to just leave them to descend into civil war would be as evil an option as any.
The wars that we are involved in are a shitty hard problem that will probably take decades to back away from. There is plenty of room to criticize how Obama is going about it, but calling this situation “easy” is just bullshit.
Ash Can
@JasonF: The Chicago Tribune has a great collection of very detailed info.
patroclus
Well, Judis has a point, but I disagree as to the re-empowerment of the financial regulatory bodies. If you read the article, the SEC is planning only 1600 inspections (down from a planned 10,000), and it really needs the sort of prudential before-the-fact powers that the Fed and FDIC have. And the Fed and the CFTC (or someone) needs to be granted the authority to require information and regulate on ALL over-the-counter derivatives; specifically including interest rate swaps, currency swaps and credit default swaps. And this needs to include offshore units, like AIGFP in London.
New financial regulatory authority is desperately needed. We entered a new world with the passage of Graham-Leach-Bliley in 1998 and CFTC Amendments of 2001 and the regulatory bodies are not currently well equipped to deal with it regardless of the intent of the POTUS and Congressional overseers.
I actually think Judis does a disservice by pretending everything is hunky dory in all areas of federal regulation. In the financial realm, we need a new reform period and the regulartory missions of the financial regulatory bodies and their statutory authorizations need to be enhanced.
MattR
@gwangung: The thing is that some of the things, like regulation, are ideological. I do not expect a Republican to believe in regulation or to want to give power to the regulatory agencies. I do expect that of any Democrat that wins the presidential nomination, whether it is Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, etc.
Dulcie
Warren G, Doug J?
DougJ
Warren G, Doug J?
Yup.
The next stop is the Eastside Motel.
jacy
@dan:
I have to kind of disagree with you on that. I think this blog does a better job than most at being nuanced and not falling into screaming hysterics, which is why it’s one of the very few blogs I read every day anymore. That and the people are usually wicked funny.
That said, it is a personal blog, not a news service. When the bloggers featured here feel like screaming because they’re pissed off about something, that’s one of the reasons they have a blog. They get to open up and yell, “Hey, you kids get off my lawn.”
And when they do, they’re almost always open to a different interpretation as long as it’s not either a willfull or ignorant misstatement of what they said in the first place.
That just gets people talking past each other, and goodness knows there’s enough of that in the world already.
Jim C
@JasonF:
You should call your local committeeman, they’ll tell you who to vote for. Be a good Chicago voter!
Nick
@MattR:
What the hell would impress you?
Mark S.
@MattR:
I don’t agree. The president has a good faith duty to execute the law, whether he or she agrees with the law or not. If he doesn’t agree with the law, he should advocate changing it. There’s a lot of wiggle room, but that doesn’t mean you don’t enforce laws you disagree with.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I think this shows that Rahm didn’t get to Judis. While reinvigorating the federal bureaucracy is a good thing it can also be electoral poison if used cleverly by the Repubs. So I’m guessing Rahm would rather keep this quiet.
Well, if anybody is saying that they are wrong. But on the other hand it’s kind of silly to give excessive credit to Obama for simply being to the left of the most hysterical rightwing faction of our society. See Prize, Nobel Peace.
Third Eye Open
@DougJ: Let me riiiiide…
Adam Collyer
@DougJ:
Yeah, but you can’t be any geek off the street.
Gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean. Earn ya keep.
DougJ
@Third Eye Open:
And you got to love the Michael Macdonald sample.
mcd410x
Why won’t the progs vote for Obama’s plan to return us to using only 0 or 1 as the second digit of NANP? Why don’t they get it?
Dulcie
@DougJ: Preach!
asdf
Linking it to Democratic/Republican mindsets is just bad, bad, bad and insures that competent behavior like this is made into a partisan issue like science.
———–
Yes and no. I think Perlstein makes a convincing case that it is linked to these mindsets. On other hand, you’re right that this conclusion (though correct) can have negative repercussions. It’s bad that Republicans now openly identify as anti-science and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine them becoming openly anti-competence.
———–
I have to go with DougJ here. When I vote for the Democrats I am expressing my opinion that the Republicans are trying to strangle the Republic.
I am not young, I have been grocery shopping since I got out of the Army in ’78. When they started pulling all sorts of things off the shelves at the grocery store a couple of years back, I knew what was happening – the Republicans had gutted regulation. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
By the way, I am going to take a crack at Cream Cheese Enchiladas. If things go well, I’ll tell you about it. If you don’t hear from me, it’s just me hanging my head in shame. This is New Mexico. If I can’t make Cream Cheese Enchiladas I guess I’ll just have to move to Texas.
Martin
@WereBear: The introduction of 401Ks turned everyone into Grover Norquist.
Nobody wants to play up regulation because no matter how much it improves situations for people, they’re afraid it’ll fuck up their retirement, not realizing that it was deregulation that already fucked up their retirement.
It’s a hard message to sell, and it was reasonable to trust that liberals wouldn’t be so goddamn lazy and brimming with poutrage as to turn against the administration without recognizing this.
I should add – rolling out a regulation message is a loser until the financial stuff is done – otherwise the Jane Hamshers of the world will continue to ignore any good work that you’ve done in favor of asking why their pet issue isn’t taken care of.
JasonF
Ash Can @34, thanks. That’s very helpful.
Jim C @40, I know where you live. Don’t make me come up there!
Citizen_X
@MattR:
Ficksed.
Sorry, but I have low standards, and until the Republic is out of danger I am sticking by them.
Anonsters
This blog is not very nuanced when it comes to people who criticize Obama for anything, regardless of the tone with which such criticisms are delivered.
Criticism is immediately equated to being batshit crazy, wingnut-intent on destroying the Democratic party, fantasyland idealists who are to blame for everything that’s not gone right in Democratic politics.
Sly
Obushma is just making those agencies bigger so that they become too unwieldy and can’t effectively go after his criminal buddies at Goldman Sachs purple-nurple rocketship squirrel fist blammo.
Notorious P.A.T.
Looks like we got ourselves another caretaker president. He’ll clean up (a little) his predecessor’s messes and make things run smoothly, and then some day down the road a Republican president will come along and undo it all in a month or two. Bill Clinton all over again.
Alan in SF
Excellent point, Doug. I disagree with nearly everything Obama has done legislatively and most of his big-picture policies (or lack thereof). But no matter how bad it gets, a Democratic administration will basically make government agencies do what they’re supposed to be doing (excluding financial and fin svcs regulators, of course). A Republican one will try to make sure they don’t. If that’s the main difference between the two parties it leaves a lot to be desired, but it’s still one worth voting for.
Adam Collyer
@Notorious P.A.T.:
You know, there is a way to fix that. We could, just maybe, not vote another Republican into office.
This country has done far, FAR worse than the moderate excesses of Bill Clinton.
MaximusNYC
@DougJ, @ThirdEyeOpen, @AdamCollyer:
If you haven’t seen the episode of Yacht Rock that tells the (fictional) backstory of how that Michael MacDonald sample came to be used in a hip-hop song, watch it immediately:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnahCol3lXs
(And anyone who is not yet acquainted with the awesomeness of Yacht Rock needs to watch them all. YouTube is your friend.)
Anonsters
BTW, I do happen to agree that this (regulatory policy) is one of the things Obama has been good about (notwithstanding Cass Sunstein being the head of OIRA).
MattR
@Mark S.: Well, I agree with you and I think it kinda reinforces my point. The fact that Obama is actually enforcing the law is not an impressive feat. It is the bare minimum I would expect of any decent president. (Unfortunately there dont seem to be too many Republicans that fall under that definition of decent.)
@Citizen_X: I can understand that POV.
MattR
And this seems to be the right thread to link to Krugman’s piece today comparing the Canadian and American banking systems, their regulatory histories and how those systems reacted differently to the mortgage crisis.
I kinda liked the second reader comment:
Just Some Fuckhead
What’s worse than Obama being a cautious – timid even – Republican-friendly centrist who will spend four years mired in an unsuccessful effort to transcend partisanship is that in the same time he’ll be portrayed by his influential enemies as the second coming of Chairman Mao and at the end of his term, his failures will be considered failures of progressivism and set us back even further than we are now.
If yer gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime, Obama.
Third Eye Open
@DougJ: Good luck with that. I imagine I would get the same look trying to explain why without Roger Troutman, Rap would suck more than it does right now.
Adam Collyer
@MaximusNYC:
I admit to being terrified by the introduction, but I think the piece itself would instantly make Saturday Night Live funny again. Well done.
asdf
“What’s worse than Obama being a cautious – timid even – Republican-friendly centrist who will spend four years mired in an unsuccessful effort to transcend partisanship is that in the same time he’ll be portrayed by his influential enemies as the second coming of Chairman Mao and at the end of his term, his failures will be considered failures of progressivism and set us back even further than we are now.
If yer gonna do the time, you might as well do the crime, Obama.”
I am not, as a rule, troll friendly but what the hell.
Just Some Fuckhead, if you think that America is going to have some sort of seriously liberal government in my lifetime you’ve got to put some money up.
Bet me. It ain’t gonna happen.
That may be what you want but I want to see Salma Hayek show up at my door with a pizza on a Friday night.
What we might get is some competent government.
What you want? Not gonna happen.
That’s the way it is.
gwangung
I still believe aligning this with ideology is not a winning strategy. It gives an easy way for both wingnuts and independents (i.e. low involvement, low info voters) to dismiss your arguments if you don’t couch them well. A competency argument is more persuasive.
Also, this disdain for marginally better behavior has a large chance of backfiring. From a behavioral standpoint, treating bad behavior the same as marginally better behavior really only encourages more bad behavior. You need not be effusive in reinforcing that better behavior, but there has to be some sort of reward when a political player actually does better.
angler
Better than Bush
Martin
@gwangung: Right. If Obama is still going to be smacked around for responsible governance even from his own supporters, why should the next guy even bother?
It seems to me that the only thing Obama needs to do to get in good standing with most of his detractors on the left is levy a 100% income tax on bank executives, then call it a day and go clear brush for the next 6 months. He doesn’t seem to get credit for anything else.
MattR
@gwangung: You make good points. I was not really thinking of this in an electoral or public policy sense. More strictly from a personal standpoint when I evaluate what Obama has done. If Obama were to face a primary challenger, I cannot really think of anything that he could say he did which I would not also assume that the challenger would have done as well given the opportunity. At this point, there is nothing like the Iraq war vote to differentiate him from a generic democrat.
Sly
Even the liberal Bloomberg News agrees that Obushma is only interested in protecting the rich.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I agree that people talk past each other every time this subject comes up.
The moderate folks compare what Obama has done to what Bush did or what McCain likely would have done, because that is the realistic alternative to Obama.
The progressive folks compare what Obama has done to what the ideal Obama would have done if he actually existed in the real world.
blackwaterdog
Obama did it when Rahm took his nap. He also filled the budget with tons of progressive initiatives, some of them just awesome – But that wasn’t really him.
General Winfield Stuck
Obama was the devil before spanking the wingnuts last week. Nothing you say Mr. Obot Dougj and this Escariot wanker can change that because we made him great. We will always have Baltimore.
concerned Prog “The Base” Al Guaida of the lib web.
kay
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I don’t really compare him to Bush or McCain.
I compare him to the other post-war Democrats who won.
I don’t think the general public or most Democrats consider Clinton’s Presidency a massive failure.
They love Bill Clinton around here. People think they did pretty well under Clinton, and they have genuine affection for him.
Martin
@kay: Well, the country, and more importantly how politics and Congress works has changed a fair bit since WWII. Bush couldn’t have been Ike no matter how much he would have wanted it. Hell, Obama can barely be Ike.
Clinton left office with a >60% approval rating. Hell, he was over 60% for almost the entirety of his last 3 years in office. The GOP has decided to not let that mistake repeat by going after Obama from the get-go and decrying everything he does as horrible. Obama cut taxes and their response was to launch the TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already) and now half the country thinks Obama raised their taxes. Honestly, with this going on, Obama can’t afford to have idealists to the left of him and insane throbbing masses to the right.
mak
@kay
The concern is not that he’ll be the next Bill Clinton; it is that he will become the next Jimmy Carter. Given the President’s obvious talents, it would be doubly frustrating if the President allowed the opposition or the ravenous media to frame this Presidency as a failure – a la President Carter, who frankly didn’t have the talent or the disposition to confront those aligned against him.
As we know from the campaign and have seen in the past week or so, President Obama can clearly rally the troops AND make the opposition look foolish – when he feels like it. The question is, where has this guy been for the past 6 months? Was he buried in the minutiae of policy, a la Jimmy? Operating behind the scenes? We don’t know since he was invisible or at least without opinion for most fo the health care debate. More importantly, is his recent return to campaign mode going to be the exception going forward, or the rule? If the former, we’re well and truly screwed in November, and possibly 2012. If the latter, then this whole Hopey presidency could work out even better than the Clinton years.
My hope is that the return of Plouffe brought with it the realization that the President’s primary function is PR guy-in-chief, not referee. We shall see.
Elie
So where is the so vaunted left perfectionists out here in the grassroots?
We are back to fighting our new County Council that wants to rescind all of the progressive, environmental ordinances passed in the last two years. We saw some activists vote on single issues the last election and left the progressive Council strung out and out of luck — their votes would have made an incredible difference. Other “liberals” in key areas of Bellingham did not vote at all (and our ballots are mailed to your home, no need to go out in bad weather).
I think that there are a lot of reasons of why things are the way they are and I believe that everyone from the citizens to advocates play a role in what happens. Anyone who says its all this person, or this group’s fault is not dialed into what is happening. Change is always hard, but particularly hard right now…
kay
@mak:
I don’t think living in fear that Obama will be labeled “the next” fill-in-the-blank is the way to approach anything difficult, and his is going to be a difficult Presidency.
That’s a defensive posture. If your complaint is that he doesn’t take enough risk, and you want to convince me he should take more, you shouldn’t adopt arguments and strategies and tactics that reek of fear.
To be honest, I’m no longer convinced of the whole “framing” strategy. It occurs to me, increasingly, that it was yet another theory developed in response to Republicans.
I’d like to find a way to stop doing that.
kay
@Martin:
Exactly. I like post-war comparisons.
And, vast sections of the whole Democratic coalition have changed since LBJ.
I’m not even sure he’s a valid comparison.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@mak:
Given the sheer amount of study required to be moderately well informed (i.e. not an expert, but good enough to sit in a room full of experts who disagree with each other and be able to play traffic cop) on every single issue both domestic and foreign regarding which the POTUS has to render an opinion, and be ready to do so on a moments notice, I’d say that “busy studying” is as good an explanation as any.
How many major job promotions have you had, at which you knew everything there was to know and hit the ground running without any mistakes, all within the first 6-12 months? Now multiply that learning curve x1000 for the demands of the office. Now add in what Obama has to work with in the Dem party, and that the ranks of the Dem caucus Senate were depleted when (in addition to Obama himself) Biden and Hillary left the Senate to staff the administration.
It isn’t the worst job on the planet (the working conditions are pretty nice), but it ain’t easy either.
Mari
It’s a bit pointless to try to resurrect the regulatory state without funding regulators adequately. Spending freeze, I’m looking at you.
Wile E. Quixote
I wish that the Democrats weren’t such fucking spineless pussies and would read Perlstein’s article and use it to beat up on the Republicans. Seriously, start calling the Republicans “e-coli-conservatives” and claiming that they want children to die from eating tainted food products. I want someone with a pair of balls, to stand up and say “Senator James Imhofe is in the pocket of corrupt meat packers in Oklahoma and is helping them sell tainted meat that kills children. Senator Imhofe wants your children to die so he can keep receiving campaign contributions.”
Wile E. Quixote
@MattR:
Well what the fuck would impress you, ya whiny little punk? Seriously, Obama could have said “Fuck it, this is low-level bureaucratic bullshit that isn’t shiny and spectacular and I’m not going to score many points by doing it, so why bother?” I’ve got my own problems with Obama, but the fact that he’s willing to put effort into incredibly important yet unglamorous items such as making sure that government regulators actually regulate impresses me because there are a lot of other Democratic politicians who wouldn’t. If Dennis Kucinich were president and you asked him to do this he’d tell you to fuck off because he was too busy implementing the Department of Peace to be bothered with boring little details like this.
MattR
@Wile E. Quixote: I guess we have very different ideas about how much time and energy President Obama had to put in to get these results. Basically, he appointed competent people to top positions and returned their funding near the level it was at before Bush took office. (EDIT: and then said “now go do your job”) Don’t get me wrong, I am glad he did all this. It is good for the country and I am sure he got pressure to take smaller steps. But I think you are giving him way too much credit if you don’t think that Hillary Clinton or Chris Dodd or John Kerry or Al Gore or Joe Biden would have done almost the exact same thing.
Wile E. Quixote
@MattR:
Let’s see, are any of those people president? Nope, not a single one of them is. I doubt that Clinton or Kerry would have done it because they suck at details, if they didn’t suck at details they might have run better campaigns and been president today. This still brings up the question of what Obama would have to do to impress you. It seems that the whole “things I would expect any Democrat to do” is a constantly moving goal post. Obama lays it all on the line to get single payer passed. Eh, who cares, I’d expect any Democrat to do that. Obama pulls all of our troops out of the Middle East and cuts the defense budget. I’d expect any other Democrat to do that. Obama gets a carbon tax signed into law and massively increases research and development expenditures for clean energy. Any other Democrat would have done that. Obama walked into the Senate, tore Joe Lieberman’s heart out of his chest and showed it to him before he died and then tore off Jim DeMint’s cock and balls, shoved them down his throat so he choked on them while bleeding to death and then ripped off DeMint’s legs and used them to beat every Republican senator to death before tearing off the heads of Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson and Max Baucus and drop kicking them over the Washington monument. Eh, fuck it, any other Democrat would have done that.
It’s like some weird inversion of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy. It doesn’t matter what the president does or how difficult it was to accomplish because “any true Democrat” would have done the same thing.
Enlightened Layperson
Looks like we got ourselves another caretaker president. He’ll clean up (a little) his predecessor’s messes and make things run smoothly, and then some day down the road a Republican president will come along and undo it all in a month or two. Bill Clinton all over again.
Exactly the problem! The Republicans have a great blackmail scheme going here. “Dont every pass any new programs, because sooner or later we’ll get our hand on them and really @#$%^! them up!”
MattR
@Wile E. Quixote: I won’t argue that “things I would expect any Democrat to do” has a different meaning to different people and that it changes depending on the conditions of the country and world. But I expect any Democrat to return regulations back to the levels they were before Bush took over. To me it is like being proud that a 8 year old does not crap his pants after spending 8 years dealing with two year olds.
In fact, I would hope they would do something more substantial in the financial sector and push for new regulation. But I view that similar to meaningful health care reform, carbon taxes, a repeal of DADT and DOMA among other issues. They are things that I hope any democrat would support, but I do not necessarily expect them to get passed so I will be impressed if they get done. One other thing is that at the end of the day it is possible for enough little things to add up to an impressive presidency, but I don’t even know where to start those goalposts.
General Winfield Stuck
@MattR:
They would have done less. Next question?
Anonsters
@Wile E. Quixote:
Criticize or idolize Obama (I fall in the middle, I confess: I’m seriously annoyed at his national security and civil liberties track record so far, and I’m seriously pleased at other bits of his record so far), I can get behind Wile’s idea here 100%.
gwangung
THAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM WITH THAT ATTITUDE.
You don’t show approval of that, then you’re showing THAT YOU DON’T VALUE IT. It’s a message not only to the person doing the right thing, but to people who don’t necessarily think it’s the right thing.
It’s real simple. It works on animals, it works on rational human beings. When they do something right, you praise. When they do something wrong, you criticise. You give constant feedback, otherwise you’re giving mixed messages.
You dont need to go overboard, but you have to give a consistent message. AND YOU’RE NOT DOING THAT RIGHT NOW WITH YOUR ATTITUDE.
cat48
O and the evil Czar Cass rock. The BP fine made me very happy since my husband works for that evil company and they should have been fined.
Platonicspoof
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