Reading Nicholas Phillipson’s admirable new(ish) biography of Adam Smith walking to my office this morning, I came across a passage from The Theory of Moral Sentiments that seems to me to capture Obama’s style and theory of governance remarkably well:
When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion …(h)e will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy as well as he can, the”inconveniencies” which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear.
(The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part VI, Section II, Chapter II, paragraph 41.*)
All this in the context of the discussion to my post from last night in which I noted Obama’s quiet reversal of one of the Bush administration’s most archtypal illiberal and disempowering attacks on the autonomy of women (and others): putting an end to the expansive “conscience” (sic) exception that allowed pharmacists and medical professionals to deny reproductive and other services as they chose.
__
My suggestion that this kind of action helps make clear the distinction between Democrats and Republicans, Obama and Bush — and hence the urgency of the next election — evoked a few sharply argued claims that this was mere cosmetics, a little lipstick on the pig that has perpetuated the Bush line in all its essentials.
In that context, Smith’s description of the virtuous leader struck me as remarkably apt: this seems very much like a capsule portrait of Obama, here captured in the very sharp sight of a thinker whose work is more an inquiry into sociability taken all in all — how humans contrive to live together — than it is, as usually mischaracterized, merely that part of it which is concerned with the economics of such co-existence.
That such an approach may fail — or at least fall well short of producing not merely a somewhat better society, but a good one — is obvious. But consider the recent alternatives.
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Top of the morning to y’all.
*That link takes you direct to an HTML version of Moral Sentiments. For rapid access to a broad Adam Smith archive, the Liberty Forum — broadly part of the Wingnut archipelago — performs an undeniable service by posting the entire Glasgow Edition of Adam Smiths Works and Correspondence, which was previously available at considerable expense from Oxford University Press. Browse at will.
Image: Dosso Dossi, Jupiter, Mercury, and Virtue, ~1520-1530
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
Oh Gawd, this post is like flypaper for firebaggers.
Tom Levenson
@Mike Kay (Chief of Staff): One can dream, can’t one?
MattF
So, a winger will read that passage and think of… what, Sarah Palin? Hmm. Or… maybe that furriner Adam Smith is really part of the Islamic Caliphate conspiracy (along with Reform Jews), after all.
adolphus
So you are one of those people who reads while walking? Those people can be the bane of pedestrian traffic here in DC. Please tell me you are more aware of your surroundings than the chowderheads clogging narrow sidewalks and metro entrances I was stuck behind this morning.
Sly
Or less recent ones. Like, oh, I don’t know, Reconstruction.
You can have all the pristine utopian visions that you want. Without the ability to manage complex situations in which divergent interests are competing for power, you will never succeed in implementing them no matter how pretty your speeches are. And I’m saying that with the full recognition that Thaddeus Stevens is one of my heroes.
Omnes Omnibus
FWIW I think that much of the frustration with Obama from the left comes from the fact that they hoped that he would “establish the right” more than he has. due to the vagaries of our political system (e.g. the inner workings, or lack thereof, of the Senate), Obama has needed to focus much of his efforts into the “ameliorate the wrong” side of the equation. Great post, BTW, and I shall search out the Adam Smith bio.
Tom Levenson
@adolphus: I am.
adolphus
entrances I was stuck behind this morning.@adolphus:
Unless, of course, it was an audio book in which case I apologize for assuming the worst.
joe from Lowell
@Sly: Quietly reversing the expansive conscience rule is exactly the opposite of making pretty speeches without being able to manage the real politics.
Sly
Further: The necessity of negotiating compromises between dissolute factions with competing interests is a feature of democracy, not a bug.
Also, too, whenever I hear the “BULLY PULPITS!” argument, I’m reminded of this rather famous Sidney Harris cartoon.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
When I was growing up we had a saying (derived from the parable of the tortoise and the hare) that “slow and steady wins the race”. That is Obama’s style. On the other hand we seem to have a number of systemic crises on our hands, both economic and ecological, which don’t necessarily look as if they are going to respond to anybody’s schedule or agenda other than their own. They are snowballs rolling downhill. So it looks to me like a race condition between arrival of the long term benefits of Obama’s slow patient incremental approach to change and when the next accute crisis happens. And I don’t know which is going to win. Depending on the timing, Obama will end up looking either very wise or very foolish to future generations; I don’t think there will be much middle ground.
mark f
So, a winger will read that passage and think of…
a RINO. Duh. Reason, persuasion, accomodation, amelioration, the people–these are anathema to wingers.
Sly
@joe from Lowell:
Pretty speeches wasn’t a reference to Obama. It was a reference to the “He should just use the bully pulpit!” brigade.
That shit is overrated and, furthermore, insults Theodore Roosevelt’s very real ability to get shit done by finessing the Federal bureaucracy. Which he did. Repeatedly. Moreso than by appealing to public sentiment.
Marmot
I’m still feeling guilty from making that “Dems and Repubs are both bad” argument during the Bush-Gore election. Boy was I wrong on that one.
Having seen the results of that mess first hand for the past decade or so, I’m amazed that some lefties are saying it about Obama. Dems aren’t the saviors we want, but — my FSM! — they’re not evil idiots.
Emma
And if you’d rather not deal with the Wingnut Universe, the Internet Archive or Google Books. Several versions of all of Smith’s works for free download.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Sly:
Also, many of TR’s best fire and brimstone speeches which people love to selectively quote today were given after he left office.
joe from Lowell
@Sly: I think we’re in agreement, Sly.
The purpose of politics isn’t to make the politically-minded feel awesome.
Davis X. Machina
No, no! The purpose of politics is self-expression, and social signaling, by your choice of candidates and positions.
There are probably forty million people in this country who would, if on offer along with ‘Republican’ or ‘Democrat’, register ‘Hollister’ or ‘Aeropostale’ or ‘Carhart’ or ‘No Logo’ instead.
from oberlin
Smith on Obama, and its relevance to the left’s view on Obama, suggests Frederick Douglass on Lincoln:
“Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined.” This is an excerpt from a speech that’s worth reading in full: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?documentprint=39
Chris Gerrib
Shorter: Obama doesn’t make good the enemy of perfect.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Marmot:
This an echo of an old political split between the Left and Liberals. Liberalism was the original Third Way between the left and the right sides of the political spectrum. When the terms are used correctly Liberals want to repair and improve the establishment, while members of the Left properly speaking want to tear it down and rebuild something better in its place. This makes them natural opponents, and is as true today as it was back in TR or FDR’s day (‘FDR is worse than Hoover, he sold us out’ is not far from what actual leftists were saying in the 1930s). Unfortunately this distinction between the two L’s has dropped out of our political vocabulary thanks to the constant drumbeat of attacks from the Right trying to discredit Liberalism by associating it with the most disreputable elements of the Left, so that today most people automatically think Liberal = Left, which makes about as much sense as saying that blue = red.
Master of Karate and Friendship
“But consider the recent alternatives.”
http://chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1907-critical-mass-dem-agenda-opens-right-wing-doors.html
Valdivia
Am I the only one who noticed you were reading *while* walking??
:)
I use to do it all the time in the streets of NYC on my way to teach. Many a time with not the best of results, be careful where you step!
Bill Section 147
Add this to the long list of small procedural changes and administrative policy changes which are under the radar but improving our lives. It was just a short administration ago that all federal government appointments were being reviewed to rebuild the spoils system. Politically vetting Park Service employees and re-writing NASA science papers were just the tip of the Bushroviantine Bureaucracy that was being built.
Cheney still has moles throughout the system ready to pounce like Soviet Commissars once the Reds return to power. They are making their lists. It will take more than one more Obama term to get us back down to pre-2000 levels of cronyism and corruption.
Master of Karate and Friendship
Formatting messed up, won’t let me edit, same old same old.
Tom Levenson
@Valdivia: Not the only one. See @adolphus:
I actually find my Kindle a pretty good ambulatory device — it’s smaller and can be manipulated one handed, which allows for a certain extra hit of peripheral vision/walk-and-chew-gum capacity.
David Koch
@Master of Karate and Friendship: I like your thinking. Keep it up. I wish I had a thousand like you, so I could parachute them into Wisconsin, and then to Cali for a good time.
Valdivia
Oops see adolphus beat me to it.
Must.read.thread.before.posting.
Master of Karate and Friendship
“Obama doesn’t make good the enemy of perfect.”
Exactly. Withdrawing from our pointless war in Afghanistan would be perfect, but escalating that war was good. Um. . . and moving our country off of oil would be perfect, but radically expanding offshore oil-drilling was good, because. . . um. . .
joe from Lowell
Being able to believe that the Democratic and Republican parties are pursuing the same agenda is a privilege available to only the most sheltered in our society.
I doubt that anyone who belongs to a union in Wisconsin believes that drivel. Maybe some of them did four months ago. Not anymore.
ppcli
@Emma:
To be sure, the Online Library of Liberty is in some way or other part of part of the wingnut orbit, but we should give it its props – it is really a fantastic collection of spectacular stuff. Most of it seems to me anti-wingnutty, in that it is either not conservative at all, or it is conservative in a more old fashioned sense back when conservatives gave arguments and tried to respond honestly to the arguments of other people. (Hard to believe there ever was such a time, I know.) Voltaire, Nearly everything written by Hume, Kant, Collected Writings of Emerson, J.S. Mill, Montaigne, Bayle,… even contemporary classics like Trevor-Roper’s essay on the witch-craze.
Also they print hard copies cheap – Right at this very moment I’m looking at big thick copies of Bayle’s writings that I bought for a song thanks to those folks.
Mind you, I find it hard to see what Thomas Aquinas has to do with “Liberty”, in any sense, and I would have thought that it would disqualify someone from being an icon of “Liberty” that they would have people burned at the stake just for disagreeing with their view of God (Thomas More, John Calvin). But hey, it’s very useful to have that stuff available too.
gwangung
@Master of Karate and Friendship: That was a dull witted comment, pretty much confirming the thrust of this post.
Jim Pharo
Worth noting the much-under appreciated tactic of BHO’s: the power of the counter-attack. In other words, don’t negotiate against yourself, let the other guy go first.
Now I know it’s Received Wisdom that BHO routinely gives away the store as his opening gambit. But I don’t think that’s true. I think he accurately gauges where an issue is likely to end up, and gives up at the outset only that which he’ll have to give up any way. (A freeze on government workers’ pay, for example). Then he sits back and lets the other side tear itself up, until they finally settle on a few points of difference. He can then assert his views, convincing a few of the swing people to come his way.
It’s also worth noting another tactic familiar to any parent: he ignores behavior in others that is counter-productive. Look how much heat this approach has diffused from gay marriage, for example. Imagine if he had engaged the birthers (more than the little he has): it would be just about the only think we’d be talking about, what with Orin Hatch holding hearings and the House drafting impeachment articles.
While I agree he’s not a great leader, he’s a fine manager, who by the way has created a favorable environment for leaders to emerge and…lead.
Valdivia
@Tom Levenson:
Yes I would have given a lot for a kindle back in the day when I was reading while walking. Those extra 20 min of class preparation–priceless. But I ended up in the arms of not grateful strangers while doing this. ;)
David Koch
@joe from Lowell:
You ain’t kidding. Ralph Nader is the highest paid shill on my lengthy payroll. Luckily, FDL works for cheap.
Ash Can
That quote from Phillipson distills the essence of small-d democratic politics. Unlike far too many commenters here, Obama has a profound understanding of this and of what it means to be a politician — even the top one — within such a system. Yes, he does things that are open to criticism, no, the bills he signs into law aren’t perfect — but then, look on the right, and people are completely flipping their shit.
Politics is called “the art of the possible” for a damned good reason. Anyone who’s ever served on any kind of committee knows how difficult it is to establish a consensus among even a few people. The factions to be juggled on a national level are mind-boggling in every possible way, and persuading enough preening divas and overgrown high-school drama queens in Congress to support your pet projects is only part of it. Criticism is one thing, but the people who demonstrably ignore the facts of political life make my ass very tired.
Ash Can
ETA: Quote from Adams, that is. Reading fail.
Roy G
Is that President Obama or President Abbas you are referring to? Of course, Palestinians can’t expect too much from their Solon either, given the prejudices of the people, and such. Just give him time. LOL.
geg6
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
You know, I’m really sick of hearing such stupid shit. People like you need to grow the fuck up.
Look around you. Do you see any sort of massive public wave for the agenda you seem to think will save the day? You think America is full of lefties who are being kept down by the evil Democrats? Please, enlighten me as to exactly how the American people are just clamoring for the Firebagger solutions. I’m dying to hear it.
And FTR, I’m about as liberal as one gets. But I’m simply too old and been through these stupid left/liberal/Democratic wars too many times to dismiss reality. Pragmatism may not get me my pony, but it gets me something more than serfdom.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@joe from Lowell:
“I doubt that anyone who belongs to a union in Wisconsin believes that drivel. ”
Obviously, as Chomsky wrote, the farther up the ladder you go the harder it is for common folk to influence a politician. So the House is easier to influence than the Senate, and the White House is virtually beyond influence. It goes in the other direction, too: state parties are much more responsive than national parties.
Also, word out of Wisconsin is the Democratic candidate for governor was little better than Walker. And that led to this. Of course, if the Democrat had won and proposed crushing unions, I wonder how many of the Madison protesters would be at home saying “hey, change takes time! don’t be a purist!” etc.
singfoom
Indeed, the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. This is a good step forward and one that should be applauded. And of course one must compromise in order to move one’s agenda forward.
I just find it very hard to clap at all when there isn’t a S&L like investigation using all tools available to the DOJ and the banksters on Wall Street are still shafting the rest of us.
I don’t think Republicans and Democrats are the same. Their policy preferences are certainly not the same. But their funders are the same. The banksters and their billionaire friends want deregulation and the dismembering of any regulations to protect us from them. If the Democratic party showed me some institutional resistance to that agenda, I would clap very loudly..
Omnes Omnibus
@geg6: If pragmatism does get you a pony, it would be one of those miniature ones that can fit in your home. I mean, let’s be pragmatic here, who has room for a full sized stable?
geg6
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
And with this, you make my point. Grow up, Grasshopper.
geg6
@Omnes Omnibus:
True. And one that is trained to poop in the toilet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
To stick with the pony theme, that is unmitigated horseshit.
Mnemosyne
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
Ah, spoken as a true upper-class white male who doesn’t have to worry about being denied healthcare because of your gender, or not being hired because of the color of your skin, or having your right to collectively bargain taken away.
It must be nice to have the luxury of spending all of your time worrying about abstract concepts while the rest of us are fighting for our lives.
Wait, you mean the same people who insist that Obama and Bush are exactly the same were claiming that Walker and his Democratic opponent were exactly the same so it didn’t matter who the people of Wisconsin voted for? And now that they’ve been proven disastrously wrong, they’re stubbornly insisting that of course a Democratic governor would be trying to end collective bargaining because arglebargle?
Gosh, I sure didn’t see that one coming.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@geg6:
“Pragmatism may not get me my pony, but it gets me something more than serfdom.”
So giving banks and financiers whatever they want while expanding debt for working people is the road out of serfdom? Because that’s what Obama is doing.
“Look around you. Do you see any sort of massive public wave for the agenda you seem to think will save the day?”
Poll: Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by two to one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/us/01poll.html?_r=1&hp
A liberal would support unions without even seeing this poll. A pragmatist would support them because it’s a winning issue. Obama has done nothing for unions, which is telling.
Citizen_X
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
A-men. So: because I like to hear about success, remind me how many governorships and State legislatures the Green Party and the Firebagger Party captured last November.
What’s that? “None,” you say? “The complete fucking opposite, catastrophically,” you say? How about you wake me up when the self-proclaimed “Left” has any number in the “W” column greater than zero, anywhere?
BTW, I love how the “master” of karate and friendship winds up getting his ass kicked, and pissing off everybody.
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship: You really need to back that up with some links showing that Tom Barrett would have declined HSR funding, declined funding for internet infrastructure, sought to end collective bargaining rights for state employees, sought the authority to sell off state owned power plants at whatever price he deemed appropriate, sought to slash BadgerCare funding, etc.. I doubt you can do that.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Mnemosyne:
“Ah, spoken as a true upper-class white male who doesn’t have to worry about being denied healthcare because of your gender, or not being hired because of the color of your skin, or having your right to collectively bargain taken away.”
Upper-class? Me? I belonged to a union back when I worked. Now I’m just collecting unemployment after being laid off a year ago.
You can deny that Obama’s health care reform was a Republican measure, but you would be disagreed with by. . . Barack Obama.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/04/60minutes/main7021844_page3.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody
“It must be nice to have the luxury of spending all of your time worrying about abstract concepts while the rest of us are fighting for our lives.”
“Abstract concepts” like innocent people being killed by Predator drones, or billionaires getting tax cuts while home heating subsidies for poor people are reduced?
Master of Karate and Friendship
“remind me how many governorships and State legislatures the Green Party and the Firebagger Party captured last November”
Is this supposed to refute my premise that it’s reprehensible to escalate an unnecessary war, to cut taxes for the wealthy while demanding public employees take a pay freeze and cutting home heating subsidies for the poor?
Rpx
The difference between Obama and his ilk on social issues is unquestionable. On economic and security issues, there’s a lot of closeness between traditional republicanism and centrist democrats like Obama and much of democratic senate, even on issues which polls show the majority of the population favor progressives over the right wing. The power of corporate interests to influence economic policy is just too great, and democrats have for so long genuflected to nutjobs on security issues that they’ve end up outsourcing security policy to the right-wing oriented military/defense think tanks.
Master of Karate and Friendship
@Ash Can:
“Politics is called “the art of the possible” for a damned good reason. Anyone who’s ever served on any kind of committee knows how difficult it is to establish a consensus among even a few people. The factions to be juggled on a national level are mind-boggling in every possible way”
Okay, so how is Obama doing on things where he DOESN’T have to forge consensus? Like the war in Afghanistan, or civil liberties, or asserting the right to kill any American, anywhere, for any reason at all?
Just Some Fuckhead
Adam Smith could not have walked to your office this morning. He’s been dead for over 200 years.
Fail.
asiangrrlMN
@adolphus: I do that, too. Until I fell UP a curb and hurt my right shoulder. But, I actually pay attention to traffic and such, so I don’t cause accidents–except to myself.
Tom, you’ve hit the nail on the head as usual. The arguments in your other thread about cosmetic touches are insulting to those of us whose these ‘cosmetic touches’ actually help. When I hear the argument that Obama is the same or worse than W., I know not to take the person making the argument seriously. That person is not arguing in good faith.
Master of Karate and Friendship
“I think that much of the frustration with Obama from the left comes from the fact that they hoped that he would “establish the right” more than he has. due to the vagaries of our political system (e.g. the inner workings, or lack thereof, of the Senate), Obama has needed to focus much of his efforts into the “ameliorate the wrong” side of the equation. ”
Or that frustration comes from his capitulating to Republicans on almost every issue, prolonging wasteful and unnecessary wars, continuing or amplifying every Bush/Cheney security state policy, letting Republicans have tax cuts for millionaires, negotiating job-killing free trade deals with other countries, agreeing with Republicans that we need to cut federal spending, increasing persecution of Mexican immigrants when expired-visa illegals are at least as big a problem, signing new restrictions on abortion, increasing offshore oil-drilling at a time when we desperately need to move off oil, putting a oil industry hack in charge of Minerals Management Service who approves an oil rig that explodes and causes the biggest environmental disaster in American history, ratcheting up the defense budget beyond what even the Pentagon wants, allowing his FCC to push back net neutrality, putting Wall Street flacks in almost every economic position in his administration, hiring an outsourcer from GE to head his council on jobs, etc etc etc.
But of course, anyone who wants to comfort themselves with fantasies about “632645645 dimensional chess” or “slow and steady wins the race” or “perfect is enemy of good” or “Obama’s critics are all of them rich white guys with plenty of time to mull over abstract metaphysical concepts” is more than welcome to do so.
Mnemosyne
@Master of Karate and Friendship:
And yet you don’t have to worry about your local Planned Parenthood shutting down because you will never use it, will you? You don’t have to worry that, if you do get a job interview, you’ll be shown the door after a token conversation because they don’t like the color of your skin.
Again, you have the luxury of worrying about other things because the things Republicans are trying to take away are not affecting your everyday life, are they?
The EPA was a Republican measure, created and founded by Richard Nixon, one of the worst of the worst. Should we shut it down and replace it with a properly leftist agency?
Are we really supposed to continue to deny healthcare to 30 million Americans because some of the ideas came from Republicans 15 years ago so they’re just not quite pure enough for you? We should let them continue to die because your ideology says that other people should suffer and die so you can continue to feel good about yourself?
Omnes Omnibus
@Master of Karate and Friendship: Any chance of you finding those links about all the crap Tom Barrett was going to do that was just like the Republicans? No? I didn’t think so.
Marmot
@Master of Karate and Friendship: You guys have been busy beating that horse!
So, I dunno about your race, economic position, or whatever, but the last time I personally made that Dem=Rep argument, the Reps plunged us into two wars and screwed the economy, among other blunders. My argument is that your position lacks any appreciation of the past 10 years! Would Gore (or Obama) have started two wars and fuxed the economy, etc.?
Definitely the Dems abandoned advocating for the working class-poor-middle class-and-downtrodden-too against the rich and powerful and stupid. That’s why I made that dumb Dem=Rep argument back in 1999-2000. But let’s drag the Dems back into the fray, because abandoning them entirely demoralizes opposition to the rich/powerful/stupid Rep constituency, while actually aiding them.
Also, the position you’re arguing sounds to me a bit like defeatism, which is just gauche.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Tom Barrett is a fine person & wouldn’t have done anything that the POS Gov Wanker is trying to do. Give him/her an ‘Omnismackdown’. Also.
Lee Hartmann
I’m sorry, but I refuse to play the game of “Obama does some good things, so don’t criticize him.”
To say that the alternative is terrible and terrifying is quite a different thing than approval for
-failure to defend habeas corpus
-a complete cockup of the financial mess by keeping Geithner, Summers, et al., bailing out Goldman Sachs etc. for far more money than would have been needed to assure all mortgages in the country…
and of course with the net result of a “shellacking”, which Obama seems to think is the result of not being conservative enough.
What also bothers me is the highly revealing exchange at the beginning of this thread, in which the commenter notes the expected criticism onslaught and Levenson says “one can dream…” pretty juvenile, I would say, and not a good idea when there is a time in which solidarity and attempts to mend differences should be paramount.
Hawes
How the fuck do you read and walk at the same time? Do you bump into things?
Mnemosyne
@Lee Hartmann:
No one’s saying “don’t criticize him.” We’re saying, “Don’t make the stupid and clearly fact-free claim that Democrats and Republicans are exactly the same and John McCain would have done the exact same things that Obama has done.”
Given that conservatives turned out in droves while liberals stayed home, what conclusion did you think he was going to draw from it?
That’s why “don’t vote” is the stupidest and most counterproductive “strategy” ever invented. Politicians don’t care why you don’t vote. They’re not going to come running after you begging for you to vote any more than the ex-girlfriend who dumped you is going to show up on your doorstep begging you to take her back.
All they know is, one group of people voted because they felt strongly, and other people didn’t bother. They’re going to listen to the people who actually got up off their asses and did something about their complaints rather than the ones who sat back in their easy chairs talking about how Democrats and Republicans are all the same, anyway, so it doesn’t matter if they vote or not.
Paula
Leave the firebaggers aloooooone! Oh the hippie punching! Look at the violence inherent in the system!
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
While some of the arguments in the comment thread are a back and forth about that, certainly the original post is implicitly saying “don’t criticize him,” in the form of “there’s a very strong argument to be made that Obama’s governance path is nearly optimal.”
liberal
@from oberlin:
Nonsense. The public on average is to the left of Obama on both health care reform and financial reform, and probably afghanistan, so that parallel fails.
liberal
@Mnemosyne:
Incoherent. If politicians don’t care why you don’t vote, presumably they don’t care why you voted, either, but rather only how you voted.
Suck It Up!
@Lee Hartmann:
And where did you see that?
Suck It Up!
MSM framing continues to seep through.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
All they care about is who you voted for. They don’t care about your deep motives for not bothering to show up at the polls or your plan to punish Democrats. All they know is that the Republicans won, which must mean that most people wanted Republicans in charge and to have Republican policies put into effect.
Mnemosyne
@liberal:
And yet the Republicans won a huge victory. How do you reconcile your belief that the Democrats are too far to the right when the even more far right Republicans won so many seats?
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: [crickets] As expected.
Kathryn
@Master of Karate and Friendship: You forgot “but hey, thanks for the Lily Ledbetter Act!” Credit where it’s due.
mclaren
Yes, Barack Obama is certainly another Solon. I recall all the wisest and most sagacious Athenians ordering the kidnapping and assassination of their citizens without charges or a trial, and without even accusing them of a crime.
Shame on you. Barack Obama has betrayed the fundamental principles of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence going back 1200 years to the Magna Carta.