Yesterday Randy Smith blogged "Chill, conservatives...Obama wont be as bad as you suspect." He is certainly correct in that assessment. But there will be some very right wing nuts who will think Obama is the incarnation of Satan and will hate the very idea of him being President, regardless of the good he may do.
Frankly, I really have very little patience or tolerance for fools, so that doesn't bother me much.
What I am concerned about is how some in the far left liberal base in the Democratic Party will feel that Obama somehow "owes" them something since they supported his candidacy from the earliest days. I would remind them that so did I and many others who are simply slightly left of center.
These far left voices are the same voices who clamored so loudly back in the primaries and during the nail biting times in the general election for him to be more harsh in response to Republican attacks, and to be more specific about precisely what leftist social and economic agendas that he supported. These are the ones who were sure that he was squandering the chance to win and that he was going down in flames if he did not do what they insisted was the "right" way to handle this campaign.
What interests me most is that Obama himself never, ever, said or did anything that should have led them to conclude that he would govern very far left of center. In fact his entire campaign championed the need to move away from red and blue stereotypes toward a more unified America. That was the essence of his speech at the convention in 2004 and that was the essence of his speech last night.
The canard that he was the "most liberal" senator in the nation was mostly a product of Republican talking points and totally ignored what Obama himself always said about that: that the vast majority of those votes were cast because Bush was always pushing a neo-con agenda and trying to shove the country ever further right.
A President Obama owes us no more and no less than what he promised: a uniting of the nation, a fair deal to the working and middle classes, and the renewal of an America that engages the world with both strength and a willingness for cooperation among friends, and a hostility to those who would do us harm.
If anyone doubts that Obama will govern only a small distance left of center, but clearly with a left/center lean, I would just suggest that they go to the Obama/Biden web site and click on "issues." In my almost 70 years on this planet I have seen no other candidate outline as clearly as Obama has just what he intends to do. And what he intends cannot make every left liberal happy. But their unhappiness cannot logically come because "they didn't know” that Obama was so moderate.
In a way it reminds me of when I worked in the Executive Office of the President under Kennedy and Johnson: many were surprised at how hawkish Kennedy was and how liberal Johnson was. Johnson was the one who was able to carry to fruition the languishing Kennedy legislative agenda. Many then were shocked at how Johnson governed. But he, like Obama, was always up front about his stances on civil rights and other vital social issues.
It will be interesting to watch Obama work with both parties and to begin to rebuild a true and effective center to our political system. For the last 8 years our center has collapsed in on itself and partisanship has ruled, resulting in a nastiness within the body politic which has been both unseemly and disgusting. My hope is that those days are over.
Monte
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Obama, the CENTRIST: How will the Liberal Left Feel?
The 800 lb. Gorilla in the Room that Obama can't Admit
The 800 lb. Gorilla in the Room that Obama can't Admit
Sen. Obama has been tracking to the center ever since he got the nomination as the Democratic candidate for President. And while that gives many on the left side of the party considerable heartburn, it has been the correct move because it appeals to independents and moderate Republicans, and, accordingly, expands the pool of voters he needs to win the election.
Liberals, including me, always get heartburn every time we are asked to sacrifice part of our sacred ideology by answering the dirty and messy question: "Do we want to be self-righteous and lose; or do we want to compromise and win?"
As Obama has tacked closer to the center his poll numbers have risen. One answer to the now commonplace question, "Why is he not winning by an even larger spread than he has?" is that he has very gradually tacked to the center and, with each step, picked up a point here and a point there, leading to his now almost double digit lead in both national and state polls.
One side effect of this new "centerist" position is the sacrifice of a truth that he may or may not know, an 800 pound gorilla of truth that he will have to acknowledge and explain to the public, but only after he is elected: we are going to have to spend our way out of the recession.
And that means that we are not going to be balancing the budget in the first term, and maybe not even in the second term. Yet Obama insists that every dime of his almost one trillion dollar spending program will be paid for by specific cuts in expenses elsewhere: Iraq, cutting some fat out of government programs and increasing the tax on the wealthy, etc.
The truth, however, is that all those allegedly "offsetting" cuts take a lot of time to enact, or implement, and will have to be phased in over several years. But, a significant amount of the spending has to be immediate if we are to shorten the current recession to only a couple of years. The spending has to create jobs now, as well as down the road several years.
The irony, of course, is that we have to spend in order to set up the national economic health that will generate the revenues to save in the future.
I am not faulting Obama for ignoring this gorilla in the room until after the election. In fact, I have no idea whether or not he even sees the gorilla. He should, but he may not. What I am strongly recommending is that we don't act as if we are naively unaware that the first several years of the new administration will actually, and necessarily, increase the deficit.
I wish we lived in a world where a candidate could just level to the electorate, and we, the voters, would be smart enough to understand the tough trade offs that lie ahead. In this case: that we have to spend our way out of this recession. But the political truth is that were Obama to admit that now, McCain and Palin would jump on that and promise not only no new taxes but argue that it is insane to increase spending at this time. And they would win in a landslide. It doesn't matter one whit that they would be lying and would not be able to balance the budget either.
So, the bottom line is that the gorilla is real and necessary, but will remain invisible for the next ten days or so.
Monte
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