Oy, Obama, n’est-ce pas? Yeah, I voted for him, I even gave him money, and I thank God every day that Georgie Boy, and Dickie Boy, are out of the White House, but overall I’m hard pressed to give my man more than a B-.
Of course, my low grade is the least of Barack’s worries. How did he fall so fast, so far? First, Geithner stumbled disastrously, or near-disastrously, with his infamous “we have a plan, which is a very, very good plan, which I will not further describe at this time, but which will do all those things we want it to do, whatever they are” press conference back in February, which probably boosted the unemployment rate by a full percentage point and added another hundred billion or two to the deficit.
Second, the continuing Geithner/Bernanke/Summers/Rubin line towards Wall Street—keep the big boys happy. For months, Bernanke in particular argued that the only reform necessary is an increase in the powers of the Fed, so that it can hand out multi-billion dollar checks more easily the next time Wall Street screws up.
Third, the simple fact that Obama, like Hillary Clinton before him, is a new generation New Dealer, passionately convinced that smart, dedicated liberals can run the country and solve all of our problems for us. Obama was convinced that he could come up with a health care plan that was so smart, so rational, so perfect that no honest person could disagree with it. I can only hope that Massachusetts has taught him that human beings are not so rational, and he not so smart, as he would like to believe. I doubt that he will consciously change his philosophy. Instead, like Hillary, he will adopt a slightly sour “realism,” aware of what will and what won’t fly, more likely to condemn, out of guilt, pressure from the left than pressure from the right.
From what I’ve read, Massachusetts voters rejected Coakley in part because they were mad about Obama’s decision to try accused terrorists in civilian courts. For this, I can only say, once more, oy vey. To lead an ugly country, one must become ugly one’s self. Not a pretty picture.
Obama’s decision not to prosecute the disgusting and manifold crimes of the Bush Administration, and, worse, to endorse that Administration’s endless claims of executive “authority” (authority to ignore the Constitution—the Constitution and all human morality and decency—whenever the President sees fit to do so), have a Machiavellian shrewdness. It is so much better not to piss off the entrenched “permanent government” of the Pentagon and the CIA, who would surely take continuing revenge against an administration that dared to hold them accountable for their crimes. And the additional “permanent government” of the AEI crowd would certainly be even more hysterical in their opposition to Obama if they thought that their beloved maximum leaders like Cheney et al. might face prison for the tortures they authorized and the murders they concealed.
Because political parties move, not according to morality, but according to physics, the physics of the swinging pendulum. Said Marx, “Said Hegel, ‘history repeats itself.’ He forgot to add, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” And so the tragedy of Watergate was repeated as the farce of Monicagate. We got one of theirs, they tried to get one of ours. The infinitely merited prosecution of Bush, Cheney, and Rumseld would undoubtedly be repeated, for crimes more trivial than an Oval Office blowjob. Letting George, Dick, and Donnie walk is probably a price worth paying, to ensure the future serenity of the Republic.
But at what a cost. Now, to cover his ass, Obama is embarked in yet another Asian war, spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent some future government in Afghanistan from doing, at some future time, something we might not like, “targeting” (i.e., murdering) suspected drug dealers, and their families, and their friends, and their neighbors, and other stray passers by, via remote control, all in the name of “freedom.”
It’s almost enough to drive one to absinthe, which, thank God, is legal.
