Drew Westen:
What Happened to Obama?<...>
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.
<...>
Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president.
<...>
Spin happened/keeps happening to Obama. Spin and the belief that Obama should be President, the legislative body and the progressive movement all rolled into one.
Westen claims that Obama failed to address inequality and attempts to dismantle the New Deal. He claims Obama is waiting for the arc of history to bend.
Utter make believe!
Obama slams GOP budget plan, calls for preserving Medicare and raising taxes on the richHe Went There! Obama Attacks the 1%It's easy to keep ignoring what the President says for a narrative spin.
Westen: "When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend."
On health care, after 100 years of attempts, this President got it done.
by Richard Kirsch
It’s not just about expanded care. It’s about proving our government can be a force for the common good.Why are John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell so intent on stopping health care reform from ever taking hold? For the same reason that Republicans and the corporate Right spent more than $200 million in the last year to demonize health care in swing Congressional districts. It wasn’t just about trying to stop the bill from becoming law or taking over Congress. It is because health reform, if it takes hold, will create a bond between the American people and government, just as
Social Security and Medicare have done. Democrats, and all those who believe that government has a positive place in our lives, should remember how much is at stake as Republicans and corporate elites try to use their electoral victory to dismantle the new health care law.
<...>
There’s nothing new here. Throughout American history, health care reform has been attacked as socialist. An editorial published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December 1932, just after FDR’s election, claimed that proposals for compulsory insurance “were socialism and communism — inciting to revolution.” The PR firm that the American Medical Association hired to fight Truman’s push for national health insurance succeeded in popularizing a completely concocted quote that it attributed to Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the Socialist State.”
In 1961, Ronald Reagan made an LP recording for an AMA front group called Operation Coffeecup entitled “Ronald Reagan speaks out against SOCIALIZED MEDICINE,” in which the future President says that Medicare will be the foot in the door to a totalitarian takeover. Almost half a century later, Sarah Palin quoted Reagan’s words during her
speech accepting the Republican nomination for Vice-President.
<...>
The Right has always understood how high the American view of the role of government would be lifted if people came to rely on government for something as essential to a person’s well-being as health care. This year, the animus that the Right maintains toward the New Deal and Great Society programs and philosophy — Social Security, Medicare, the constitution allowing the federal public to regulate commerce — has become visible in the Tea Party movement. The last thing that the corporate and ideological Right want is for health care to be a new pillar added to the foundation of government social insurance.
more "more seniors receiving free preventive care, discounts in the donut hole"HHS announces free birth control for women in the U.S.The bill signed into law by President Obama also established a
path to get to single payer.
Those who believed it better for the health care bill to fail were definitely willing to wait for a better opportunity.
Westen: "Like most Americans, at this point, I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue."
The notion that "most Americans" have no idea what the President and the Democratic Party stands for on "virtually any issue" is utter nonsense, especially given the fact that the Boehner and the teabaggers have taken a
big hit over the last several months.
NYT editorial: Race to the Right Here's a good example of how an MSM title obscures what the President saysThere are points that the President emphasizes repeatedly, which Westen and others simply spin away.
Obama to Use New York Speech to Press for Financial Reform. (
speech)
Obama Defends Government Action in Michigan Speech (
speech)
President Obama sounds energy alert (
Carnegie speech)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
