GoldbergBlog

How Will Obama Disappoint Us Today?

I will say this for electing the lesser of two evils: no disappointments. But people genuinely liked (and still like) Barack Obama. I can’t imagine Alex Ross doing this for any other Presidential candidate. He seems like a cool guy and during the campaign, I agreed with him on most issues.

But this week was a reminder that your heroes will disappoint you and the question isn’t whether or not they’ll fall short of your expectations but how short. I understand that politicians can’t make good on all their campaign promises and that new information can come to light that causes anyone to change their opinions. But this has been a horrible week for Barack Obama. He’s gone against his oath for transparency by refusing to release torture photos for fear it will inflame the Muslim world (as if the people it would inflame don’t hate us on general principle anyway). He has re-inforced Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by allowing the firing of Arabic translator Dan Choi for coming out of the closet. Today we learn that he’s nominated a lawyer whose made his career defending polluters to be the head of the DOJ’s Environmental Division.  This is all on top of last week’s move to refuse prosecution of those involved in the Bush torture program.  And don’t even get me started on how his economic plan for dealing with the banks has just been a continuation of Bush.

And that’s where it gets most frustrating: copying Bush.  It’s so simple to be a better President than that guy.  All you do is look at what he did and then do the opposite.  While I appreciate some of what Obama’s done in his 100 and some odd days, his message of “Change” has really come with the caveat of “Change What Is Easy”.  It’s the dark side of pragmatism.  An idealist may get nothing done but a pragmatist only accomplishes what’s easy.  Furthermore, Obama can afford to lose right now.  He doesn’t need to play it safe because the country wants some radical changes from the disasterous past eight years and even if he does screw it up, the freak sideshow of the Republican party is too powerless to do anything about it.

At this point, Obama seems like he’s trying to be Bill Clinton with more charisma and less libido.  And Clinton did yield some prosperous times.  But Obama could do so much better and this path of least resistance isn’t necessarily the smartest one to take.

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