So the second the Republican victory in Massachusetts was announced, Obama proclaimed that he is ready to scale down the health care bill. Like the changes it initially introduced weren't modest enough.
When I heard about Obama's rush to abandon his most cherished goals even before anybody actually asked him to do so, I remembered George W. with a kind of weird nostalgia. Sure, we made fun of him and couldn't wait for him to go away, but the guy had his strong sides. It is impossible to imagine Bush Jr. giving up on a piece of legislation that mattered to him simply because of losing one Senate vote. Anybody tried to stop the legislation he supported, and we would have him on television in matter of hours, raving about unpatriotic pro-terrorist evildoers who are trying to destroy our values or freedoms.
And he got results, too. Of course, these were really horrible, scary results, but you've got to respect the strength and the dedication it took to strip the Americans of their constitutional civil rights, for example. I mean, the guy decides that he doesn't like the Constitution, so he goes and introduces the Patriot Act without giving a rat's little tookie about anybody's opinion. The people who voted for him definitely got their money's worth, while those who voted for Obama are still waiting for him to deliver anything.
From the moment he was sworn into office, Obama has dedicated a lot more effort to appearing "bi-partisan" than to anything else. It is as if he hadn't been around for the preceding 8 years and had failed to observe that Bush Jr., who was signally uninterested in any kind of bi-partisanship, got reelected to his second term in office. Somehow, Obama seems oblivious to the simple truth that when you fall over yourself to give up on your beliefs even before anybody suggests you do, you only end up appering weak, irresolute, and indecisive. These are obviously not the qualities anybody wants in a president.
And it's the same with everything. Fumbling, half-measures, and so on. Today, Obama announced that he is ready to put some restrictions on banks. Good for him, but why just "some restrictions"? Why not just bring back the Glass-Steagall and proceed from there? It worked for a long time, so just bring it back and stop inventing the wheel.
What Obama refuses to see is that all these attempts to appease everybody will cost him the next elections. He will never attract the Republican base simply because they have their own candidates. But in the process of trying to ingratiate himself clumsily with the conservatives, he will lose the people who voted for him in the first place. They will be so disillusioned that they will simply fail to show up at the polls. And who can blame them.
2 comments:
Though it has more to do with the economy than anything, I doubt Obama will be re-elected.
We needed a lot more FDR than this.
But if the economy is mediocre or worse come election time, no way Obama will win again.
And he deserves it; he did it to himself.
Clarissa, excellent analysis on Pres. Obama's back bone or lack thereof, never cared much for Bush but he did stick to his guns, I wish our president knew the power he had and actually stayed consistent with his goals and ideals instead of trying to please all manner of men!
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