Food for thought from Tom Tomorrow: "Obama is a centrist technocrat"

[Richardo]

We voted for a centrist technocrat, who campaigned as a centrist technocrat, and who promised to govern as a centrist technocrat — and now the true believers are shocked to find a centrist technocrat in the Oval Office.

- Tom Tomorrow, 'This Modern World', 5/21/09

Ergo, we're not likely to see anything from President Obama that will get a 100% (or even a passing grade) on a Progressive Purity Test. That would include Supreme Court Justices. Health care reform. Prosecution of the wars. Military commissions. Prosecution of Bush administration 'war crimes' and 'lies'. Economic policy. Legislative strategy. Executive appointments. And so on.

And anyone who ever thought they were were putting a dyed-in-the-wool progressive in the White House was not listening to Obama's actual words during the entire 18-month campaign.

I keep an eye on the St Petersburg Times ObamMeter that is tracking each of Obama's campaign promises. Of the 514 promises, 115 (22%) have had some action taken in the first four months (8%) of his first term. Pretty good. Of these, 30 have been kept, 8 are compromises and 6 have been broken. Really not too shabby.

Am I an Obamabot? I'm sure by this point in the post many are saying 'yes'. But I have had plenty of disagreements with Obama since January - the appointment of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, shoddy vetting, appointee ethical problems, continuation of Bush policies in security matters, his lack of explicit vocal support for GLBT issues. And I argue against them.

I just keep two things in mind: 1) He told us most of this stuff in advance, and 2) Sarah Palin's in Alaska.