[Peace-discuss] About Obama: Nostradamus bis.

[C. G. Estabrook]

Yes, he's certainly turned out to be even worse than his paleoconservative and
Left critics said he would be.  But it's only the depoliticized discourse in the
US -- which concentrates on candidates' "personal qualities" and markets them 
like toothpaste, ignoring how they will act in office -- that made him possible.

Depoliticizing the discourse of course doesn't come cheap.  It costs a lot to
establish the limits of allowable debate -- maybe the third of GDP goes to
"marketing."  You've got to silence a lot of debate without looking like a
censor.  --CGE


Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> The following rather long article spells out what may lie before us in this
> nation, a painful and perhaps disastrous prospect. Concurring in what the
> author says leads will probably lead to a deep pessimism. One aspect not
> included in this indictment is the deep criminality that Obama's been causing
> to others around the globe.
> 
> David Michael Green is a political scientist.
> 
> Read it. The many comments  to this article, at
> 
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/05-5
> 
> are also interesting.
> 
> --mkb Published on Saturday, September 5, 2009 by CommonDreams.org 
> <http://CommonDreams.org> After Obama by CommonDreams.org
> <http://www.commondreams.org/>
> 
> by David Michael Green
> 
> Eight months into it, it now seems pretty clear that the Obama administration
> is finished.
> 
> There were some of us -- indeed, many of us, myself included -- who thought
> there was a possibility that Barack Obama might seize this moment of American
> crisis, twinned with the complete failure for all to see of the regressive
> agenda, to become the second coming of Franklin Roosevelt.
> 
> Many think that was a naïve position from the get-go.  I disagree.  Not only
> do I believe that it was a legitimate possibility, I would argue that it was
> the logical choice even just from the narrow perspective of Obama's personal
> fortunes.  The president is every day committing political suicide by a
> thousand cuts because he chose not to take that track.
> 
> That's certainly his prerogative, and at this point I wish him all the worst
> of luck in whatever comes next.  Since I never assumed he would be a
> progressive once elected, any bitterness that I feel is not rooted in his
> failure to become the new FDR.  However, I am irate that, in domain after
> domain, President Obama has become the personification of the very Bush
> administration policies that Candidate Obama so roundly criticized.  And I
> feel deep hostility toward him about the betrayal of legions of voters --
> especially the young -- who believed his message of hope and thought they
> were getting a president on their side, not Wall Street's.
> 
> More on that in another column.  Right now, the question is what comes next?
> The Obama presidency is probably already toast, though of course anything can
> happen in three or seven years.  But he is on a crash course for a major
> clock cleaning and, what's worse, he doesn't seem to have it remotely within
> him to seize history by the horns and steer that bull in his preferred
> direction.  Indeed, near as I can tell, he doesn't even have a preferred
> direction.
> 
> Obama was complete fool if he ever believed for a moment that his campfire
> kumbaya act was going to bring the right along behind him. Even s'mores
> wouldn't have helped.  These foaming-at-the-mouth lunatics have completely
> lost all sense and proportion, and were bound to viscerally hate any
> president left of Cheney, let alone some black guy in their white house.
> Meanwhile, centrist voters in this country seem pretty much only to care
> about taxes and spending, and so he's lost them, too, without the slightest
> rhetorical fight in his own defense. And he's blown off a solid progressive
> base by spitting in their eyes at every imaginable opportunity, beginning
> with the formation of his cabinet, ranging through every policy decision from
> civil rights to civil liberties to foreign policy to healthcare, and
> culminating with his choice not to even mobilize his email database in
> support of his policies.
> 
> So if he's lost the left, right and center, just who does he think is going
> to be clamoring to give him a second term three years from now, especially if
> the economy remains lousy for most people in the country, as it's likely to
> do regardless of GDP or Dow Jones growth?
> 
> There is the possibility that Obama could change course significantly, just
> as Bill Clinton did in 1995, following the mid-term election in which his
> most astute political stewardship managed to turn both houses of Congress
> over to the Republican Party.  But Clinton turned to the right and became
> just a less snarly version of the Republicans, while Obama is already there.
> I don't really think he could conceivably turn further rightward at this
> point, and I don't think he has anywhere near the guts to turn to the left
> and do what he should have done in the first place.
> 
> What all this suggests to me is that Obama and his party will manage by 2012
> to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and return the GOP -- and probably
> an even nastier version of it than the Bush-Cheney junta, at that -- to
> power.  It suggests that the Democrats, who were riding high six months ago
> over an all but destroyed Republican Party, will be switching places with
> them within three years time, if not sooner -- and all because of their own
> cowardice, corruption and ineptitude.  This outcome is hardly inevitable, but
> it is fast approaching.  Looking out over the horizon, I see five key factors
> most likely to effect the health and longevity of the Obama administration,
> and not one of them looks positive.
> 
> The eight-hundred pound gorilla rummaging around in the kitchen right now is
> the economy.  Indeed, this factor alone could readily swamp the combined
> effect of all the others, particularly if it swings dramatically in one
> direction or another.  My guess, as a non-economist (which, of course, only
> means that I have a better shot at an accurate prediction than the economists
> do), is that the economy will exhibit some substantial signs of growth over
> the next three years.  But I suspect the recovery will be tepid, even
> according to establishment measures such as GDP growth or the state of the
> Dow.  More importantly, I strongly suspect that this will be another jobless
> recovery, like the last ones we've had, and that the new mean standard of
> living for the middle class will be pretty mean indeed, significantly
> diminished compared to what people were already struggling to hold on to when
> the Great Recession began.  Personally, I think if American history teaches 
> us anything at all about presidential elections, it is that for an incumbent
> president this is more or less the worst possible scenario imaginable upon
> which to go asking the public to punch his ticket again.  Americans vote
> their pocketbook, and that alone is likely to be the kiss of death for
> Obama's second term aspirations.
> 
> Meanwhile, of course, he's also chosen to put healthcare reform on the table
> as the signature legislative initiative probably of his entire presidency.
> That's fine, but watching him in action I sometimes wonder if this clown
> really and actually wants a second term.  I mean, if you had asked me in
> January, "How could Obama bungle this program most thoroughly?", I would have
> written a prescription that varies little from what we've observed over the
> last eight months:  Don't frame the issue, but instead let the radical right
> backed by greedy industry monsters do it, on the worst possible terms for
> you.  And to you.  Don't fight back when they say the most outrageous things
> about your plan.  In fact, don't even have a plan.  Let Congress do it.
> Better yet, let the by-far-and-away-minority party have an equal voice in the
> proceedings, even if they ultimately won't vote for the bill under any
> circumstances, and even while they're running around trashing it and you in
> the most egregious terms.  Have these savages negotiate with a small group of
>  right-wing Democrats, all of them major recipients of industry campaign 
> donations.  Blow off your base completely.  Cut secret sweetheart deals with
> the Big Pharma and Big Insurance corporate vampires.  Build a communications
> strategy around a series of hapless press conferences and town hall meetings,
> waiting until it's too late to give a major speech on the issue.  Set a
> timetable for action and then let it slip. Indicate what you want in the bill
> but then be completely unclear about whether you necessarily require those
> things.  Travel all over the world doing foreign policy meet-and-greets.  Go
> on vacation in the heat of the battle.  Rinse and repeat.
> 
> Altogether, it's an astonishingly perfect recipe for getting rolled, so much
> so that I'm not the first person to have wondered out loud if that was
> actually the president's intention all along.  Look at this freaking fool.
> Now look at the guy who ran a letter-perfect, disciplined, textbook,
> insurgent, victorious campaign for the White House.  Can they possibly be the
> same person?  And, since they obviously are, is there possibly another
> explanation for this disaster besides an intentional boot?  I dunno.  But
> what I do know is this.  Obama's very best-case scenario for healthcare
> legislation right now represents a ton of lost votes in 2010 and 2012.  And
> the worse that scenario gets, the worse he and his party do.  But even a
> ‘success' in the months ahead will produce a tepid bill, a mistrustful
> public, an inflamed and unanswered radical right, and a mealy-mouthed new
> government program that doesn't even begin to go online until 2013.  A real
> vote-getter that, eh?
> 
> Which brings us to a third major electoral liability for Obama.  Human 
> beings, by and large, like to be led.  They like their leaders to inspire
> their confidence -- even when doing so takes the form of the most
> fantastically shallow dress-up kind of blowhard buffonery, à la George W.
> Bush -- so that they don't have to think too much about how little personal
> confidence they themselves actually possess.  Obama is the complete
> antithesis of this model of the presidency.  He is Harry Reid's incontinent
> grandmother as president.  He is Neville Chamberlain's squirrely little
> nephew knocking shit over in the Oval Office while he plays "Mr. President",
> in-between episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants.  He is a bowl of Jell-O.  That
> someone forgot to put in the fridge.  He exhibits no competence as a chief
> executive.  He inspires no confidence as a national leader.  And,
> increasingly, his credibility is coming into question.  Who wants to vote for
> that?
> 
> A related problem is that he loves to flash that big toothy grin of his right
> before his venomous adversaries knock his choppers back into his head.  I'm
> trying to imagine what a wimpier president would look like, and having a very
> hard time coming up with an answer.  I'm trying to imagine how the regressive
> right could possibly bathe their country's president in a more acidic pool of
> vitriol, and I'm having a difficult time topping their assertions that he's
> out to kill the elderly while simultaneously indoctrinating grade-schoolers
> into the ranks of the Revolutionary Spartacist League.  I'm trying to
> conceive of how vacant a White House could possibly be of any whiff of
> push-back against these assaults, and I can't quite envision it.  Maybe if
> they went out and did some real scandals and filmed it all as a gift for the
> GOP?  Perhaps they could dig up Vince Foster's body and murder him all over
> again, this time on video?  Or they could hire Ken Starr to just run amok in
>  the White House for a few years, looking for anything remotely juicy? But
> could Obama's Keystone Kops even do a scandal properly?  I'm not sure, but
> I'm pretty confident the public is losing trust in this guy as their Big
> Daddy Protector.  Who in America would vote for this eunuch to be in charge
> of keeping their little suburban Happy Meal-stuffed brats safe from tawny
> evil-doers with bad intentions?
> 
> As if all that weren't enough, Obama is probably also sitting on several 
> national security powder kegs - including Guantánamo, which he is unlikely to
> close;  Iraq, which he is unlikely to leave;  and Afghanistan, which he is
> unlikely to win.  The latter in particular has now become his war, and lately
> it is smelling a lot like Vietnam, circa 1964.  An decades-long struggle
> against a popular nationalist adversary.  Endless calls from the Pentagon for
> more troops.  Incredibly inhospitable terrain for fighting a war.  An
> American-made puppet government hated for its corruption and for its gross
> incompetence at every task other than raw predation.  Mmmm-mmm.  What a yummy
> stew. Haven't dined on that fine cuisine since 1975.  And what another great
>  vote-getter to add to this sorry list, eh?
> 
> Put it all together and it's pretty hard to see how Obama gets a second term.
> Which can mean only one thing:  We're looking at a Romney or a Palin or some
> sort of similar monster as the next president, despite the fact that their
> party was absolutely loathed only a year ago, and actually still is today.
> It won't matter.  People will be voting against the incumbent, not for any
> candidate, and that will leave only one viable choice, especially for
> centrist and right-wing voters. Whoever wins the Republican nomination will
> be the next president, crushing Obama in the general election (assuming he
> survives the Democratic primaries).  And that's a particularly scary notion,
> since the party's voting base who will make that choice in the Republican 
> primaries is the same crowd you've seen featured all this summer at town hall
> meetings.  Olympia Snowe is not going to be the Republican nominee in 2012.
> Know what I mean?
> 
> So the question then becomes, what next?  What happens after Obama?
> 
> I see two possible general paths going forth from that point -- one bad, and
> one worse.  The bad path would involve a frustrated but essentially 
> beaten-into-submission public oscillating between incompetent Republican and
> Democratic administrations, turning one after the other out of office -- not
> on ideological grounds, but instead seeking any change that has the
> possibility of stanching the empire's hemorrhaging wounds. This would look a
> fair bit like Japan or Britain does today.  The former just replaced its
> government and the latter will likely do so next spring.  But I don't think
> either of these major party shifts are really ideological in nature, and I
> don't think either new government is likely to be hugely different from the
> one it succeeded.
> 
> But Americans seem to me especially piggish critters these days, and the 
> benign model that is sufficient to placate disgruntled citizens of long-lost
> empires may not suffice to soothe the savage soul of Yanquis still deep in
> the process of watching theirs crumble around their feet. That moves us from
> the bad path to the worse.  Given what the American public is capable of
> happily countenancing during relatively flush times (can you say "Reagan"?
> "Bush"?), imagine what could happen when spoiled Baby Boomers go to the polls
> under conditions approaching the 1930s.
> 
> Such a crisis could conceivably entail a sharp turn to the left, and in every
> rational country certainly would.  But this is America.  We pretty much don't
> go anywhere near socialism, at least not overtly, and in any given decade --
> especially the recent ones -- we're lucky to get away with anything less than
> creeping fascism.  Moreover, elections are almost always reactions to the
> status quo.  Since Obama is ridiculously -- but nevertheless widely --
> perceived as a liberal, the reaction is all the more likely to involve a
> sharp turn to the right in response.
> 
> Under this scenario, anything portside of Torquemada would be buried alive if
> not annihilated, and the next regime would likely be one that could make Dick
> Cheney shudder.  And that's the happy side of the equation.  If history is
> any guide, a nifty (not so) little war could only be right around the corner,
> for the helpful purpose of jump-starting the economy, crushing the domestic
> opposition, and distracting the public from that pesky nuisance once
> affectionately referred to as ‘reality'.
> 
> I don't want to lay odds on which of these outcomes is the more likely, but I
> feel pretty confident, I'm sad to say, that any happier scenario is
> considerably less likely than either of these.  For a lot of reasons, 
> America's near-term future looks bleak to me, and this country -- which 
> already has a remarkable tendency to make dangerously foolish and sickeningly
> selfish political choices -- is altogether too likely to do something that
> would make the Bush years look like a scene from a Norman Rockwell canvas by
> comparison.
> 
> This tragedy, if it comes, will have many sires who share responsibility for
> driving America from Republican red to fascist black.  But on that list must
> certainly be included the powder blue of the effete Obama administration that
> came in between.
> 
> Rahm Emanuel once famously averred that "You never want a serious crisis to
> go to waste.  And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you
> think you could not do before."
> 
> I don't really believe that corporate-controlled fascism is what he had in
> mind when he said that.
> 
> But, who knows?  Maybe that's exactly what he was thinking.
> 
> Or -- perhaps most likely of all -- maybe nobody at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
> is doing much thinking whatsoever these days.
> 
> /David Michael Green is a professor of political science at //Hofstra//
> //University// in //New York//. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions
> to his articles (mailto:dmg at regressiveantidote.net ), but regrets that time
> constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found
> at his website,www.regressiveantidote.net
> <http://www.regressiveantidote.net/> ./
>