BroDeal said:
I knew Obama's "change" would be a joke as soon as he started staffing his administration. He filled the positions with people from the Clinton administration, including Rahm Emmanuel as chief of staff. These are people who are completely amoral and don't give a damn about anything other than staying in power. Right there that told me he would go for a completely political approach and would not be willing to fight for anything, lest it upset a potential voter. It was going to be Clinton 2.0. It was a real laugh when he appointed Geithner as Treasury Secretary.
The signs were there when he caved on the FISA bill and gave the telecommunication companies immunity for violating the civil rights of Americans. If he had any balls he would have prosecuted Bush administration members for war crimes and cleaned house on Wallstreet. He should have stopped both wars cold, blamed the failure on Bush, which is true, and devoted the resources to American problems. He should have brought General Shinseki, the only honest man in the high command of the miliary during the Bush regime, out of retirement and made him Secretary of Defense. He should have played hardball with the TARP funds; any company that needs to be bailed out should have been forced to hand over large amounts of equity to the government and broad swaths of the management should have been fired for incompetence. Half the white collar workers at GM and Chrysler should be waiting in soup lines right now.
Instead what do we get? Credit card "reform" that results in the banks jacking everyone's rates in an environment were interest rates are effectively zero.
It just goes to show you that American democracy is firmly in the hands of the military-industrial block and the corporate lobbyists. Yet this was inevitable given the state of American capitalism and the nation's role as the only surviving superpower (at least for now).
The interesting thing is that, especially after Bush, Obama is loved by the majority of Europeans, because his ideological positions jive with those among the progressive-socialist democratic principles of most of the Euro proletariate and because he is not a unilateral warmonger. Bet they are obviously more concerned with US foreign policy than internal affairs. To them the healthcare issue, for example, is simply incomprehensible (as to why everyone isn't simply covered by the State like in any other civilized country). Yet they are not affected by it in the way for instance how the US handles the wars abroad it has begun, or the manner in which Washington will enforce new regulations over Wall Street, the finacial market that triggered the world wide recession. Whereas in the States he was welcomed by just about everybody that knew the nation needed to change direction after two terms of the neocons in power. However, most Americans seem to be rather decisive and unforgiving in their judgments (negative) on performence connected to maintaining electoral promises. And here Obama has failed in their eyes.
And I am by no means going to defend him, however, those who like yourself didn't bank on him being able to do so were simply living in reality. Because no US president, other than a neoconservative one who doesn't want to rock the interests of those mega-wealthy entities truly in command (and unwaveringly supports them like Bush did), will find it easy to govern, when govern means moving towards social justice. And this also because, for example on healthcare, not even all democrats can stomach the socialist option, to say nothing of the republicans who are almost universally against it.
In democracy nobody is Caesar, but this it seems most even well intentioned people forget when they expect someone to simply arrive on the scene and make their miserable lives better. Unfortunately it also seems, however, that because the conservative leaders have a much easier time side-stepping the entire social justice issue and are backed by the interests of the rich and powerful, they are able to govern with more decisiveness. Despite those on the opposite side of the ideological fence not being able to stand seeing their agendas pushed through government only because they are the least difficult to digest by those who have it good and don't want (or need) change. And then be praised for it by the conservative population, as if they had done something monumental.
Not the case with the democrats (or at least those truly interested in social justice and not their careers - now about 2), whose task is infinatley harder, and consequently destined to find more ferocious resistance (as is in Obama's case), because of the nature of wealth and power which never wants to give up any of its privledges while is able to defend them better than the millions upon millions who uselessly struggle to even moderately improve their own state.
Then Obama is the first black president (and with muslim faith in his family to boot), who, consequently, if he had tried to be as much of a hardballer as his reforms warrented, then the republicans (and many racially insecure democrats) would have used his minority status against him. Making him out to have been some who knows what kind of devious monster, an anti-American tyrannical reformer who threatens, by his very persona and background, the "true" national identity. Naturally such a notion is perverse and irrational, yet a large percentage of Amercans would be inclined to agree had Obama moved as forcibly as his predicessor had done.
Sounds to me the man lives with the classic, and lethal, political syndrome of "damned if you do, damned if you don't." Welcome to contemporary US politics. Next election, I'm voting for the radical athiest-socialist-nonpatriot-liberal-anti-imperialist-green-always ride your bike to work-party. I'm sure our block will get at least 0.0000009% of the vote. But my conscience will be at peace.
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