Obama’s Personality
Sometimes our early take on a man is the best. In 2006, I wrote “I believe Obama“.
One of my rules of analysis is that I believe people when they tell me who they are. That doesn’t mean I believe everything they say - I never believed Bush was a moderate, for example, because I believed what he told me when he refused to correct obviously false budget numbers. His budget plan spent the surplus twice, and I believed that’s what he would do. And, needless to say, I was right (well sort of, he spent even more than that, but you get the point.)
People tell you who they are all the time, all you have to do is listen, separate out the noise intended to distract you, and then believe them. Bush’s record of failure at everything he did, for example, was clear. His slurring of words and inability to talk coherently was clear. His code-speaking to the Christian right was clear. All these things were there to see in 2000.
So, let’s talk about someone else. Obama. I’ve been listening to Obama and I’ve been hearing what he has to say. He’s been pretty hostile to the netroots, contemptuous and dismissive, and I’ve heard that and I believe it. Obama is telling me he has no respect for the sort of people who make up the netroots. I think he’s sincere - I don’t think it’s “just” a tactical move. He genuinely dislikes people getting worked up over issues. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants everything and everyone to be “nice”. I believe him when his words and actions tell me that, just as when he backed down from McCain when McCain unfairly attacked him, I believed what that told me about his spine and about the fact that he prefers peace to conflict, even when he’s in the right. I believe him when he says he admires John McCain and that he admires Joe Lieberman and I understand what that says about him (because, of course, if you actually follow McCain and Lieberman you know they aren’t even close to men of their word. And Obama knows that.)
Obama has told me who he is, and I have listened. If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise, because he believes in it - not as a means, but as an end. He will shy away from big fights, because he doesn’t like fighting. He may “believe” in universal healthcare, but he believes in compromise more. And I’m betting I know which belief will win out.
I’m sure many will disagree, but when people tell me who they are I listen. Obama has spoken, I’ve listened, and since I don’t believe that compromise is an end rather than just a means, he’s not the person I think should be president.
Why do you hate Obama? You must be a racist.
Lambert: No, clearly he’s part of the “pure” left! Everything must be perfect for him! 100% or else! Doesn’t he understand that Obama plays 11-dimensional chess and he’s just one move away from a multi-dimensional checkmate?
…;P
Lambert: No, clearly he’s part of the “pure” left! Everything must be perfect for him! 100% or else! Doesn’t he understand that Obama plays 11-dimensional chess and he’s just one move away from a multi-dimensional checkmate? License to assassinate Americans overseas, government austerity, continued torture, and prosecution of whistleblowers are all just ruses to distract Republicans from the real agenda.
…;P
Wait a minute. Did you write that in 2006?? How come you’re smarter than I am?
This is what I’ve mentioned before as “Sesame Street morality.” At least two generations now have been raised with the idea that conflict can be resolved with no fingers pointed and no loser. The schoolteacher self-protecting discipline of evenhandedness between bully and bullied also produces this.
It wasn’t just Obama. It was a very large number of people who believed then and believe now that divisiveness is itself an evil.
The whole “I don’t care who started the fight” thing used to drive me mad as a kid. “Umm, actually, it matters. It may take two to fight, but it only takes one to start a fight unless you’re willing to just sit there while someone hits you.”
I’d put it more simply - the simplest explanation is the one to be preferred. Might have heard that one somewhere before, so I can’t claim it as an original thought. Still, it works when you have a choice between thinking that someone is playing eleven-dimensional chess or doing something stupid, particularly if no one can come up with a plausible strategy that the move in question could be a part of.
For me, his actions spoke volumes. I wasn’t onto him by 2006, but by late 2007 I understood him pretty well.
Well, actions speak louder than words. And if you look at Obama’s personal history, you see a guy who has no interest in taking a stand or getting things done that benefit ordinary people. Like Bush, he literally has no accomplishments to his name. As president of the Harvard Law Review, he was AWOL and allegedly published only one unsigned note. As a guest lecturer, he didn’t publish, didn’t keep office hours and was too lazy to show up for most staff meetings. As an attorney, with a Harvard law degree, working at a civil rights law firm IN CHICAGO, he did not lead on a single suit and participated in no precedent setting cases. In fact, we don’t even know who his clients were or what he did at the law firm. As a part time state senator, working approximately 55 days per year (that’s it, folks), he initiated no legislation that ever passed. In order to have a resume to run for the US senate, Emil Jones grabbed legislation that other senators had worked on and written, sometimes for years, and randomly assigned Obama’s name to it. He didn’t have a single piece of legislation ready to go when the state elected a Democratic governor. As a US senator, he seems to have contented himself with forcing lobbyists to stand whe they eat with legislators.
He’s an incredibly lazy, entitled and not terribly bright human being. Good riddance to bad rubbish,
I’m impressed. In 2006 all I knew about Obama was that he had managed to win a senate seat against the lamest candidate to ever run (even counting that new guy in South Carolina), you know, whathisface the black antiabortion Republican who didn’t even live in Illinois and who disowned his lesbian daughter. By early 2008 I kept hearing such amazing things about this guy from Chicago, but every time I listened to him I’d get as impatient and angry as I used to get listening to W. I wanted to like him because he was supposedly against the war in Iraq, but all I could hear was pure platitudes and empty promises (and a really smug delivery). I was desperate for a candidate better than Hillary, but not THAT desperate. So I must give credit to Ian for hearing the substance of the man so early. I knew he’d be bad, really bad (from kicking off his campaign with an virulently antigay black evangelical, to kicking off his inauguration with a white one, I felt nothing but comtempt from him and from his people), but I still wasn’t prepared for this reality. When I first read Ian’s post, I forgot his first line about 2006, since it seemed like it could have been written this morning. Spooky how accurate they turned out to be.
Is Lori telling the truth, or something close to the truth? It certainly fits with my opinion of him, which kind of makes me suspicious (not of Lori, but of things that fit too neatly with what I already think). If true, how were so many bloggers on the left taken in by his record? I read quite often during the campaign that he was an amazing consensus builder in the state senate, which sounded like BS in light of the way he played Dems against each other. One bitter lesson of that election was that the left blogosphere is almost as parrot-y and mindless as the MSM.
“Is Lori telling the truth, or something close to the truth?”
Well, there are news stories about his work in the IL state senate… So without doing the research, I’m gonna guess Lori’s rant comes from the PUMA “Democratic” nutjobs.
(That said, I broadly agree with Ian’s take on Obama believing in compromise as an end in itself.)
I’d say anyone who thinks “party unity” with useless corporate tools like Blanche and Barrack and the Blue Dogs is important to preserve sounds like the nutjob here, not the PUMAs. And that link is pretty thin gruel. One of the three examples of his “heart and soul” hard work cited is about stopping forced confessions by the police. Hilarious in light of his 100 day promise to close Gitmo and stop torturing suspects. Hilarious if it wasn’t so sickening. And I wonder how much of that “cajolery” was directed at Republicans. I’m guessing it would have all been directed at Dems if his current legislative style is any indication.
Example two is a blurb about an earned income tax credit, foreshadowing his Republican/Vichy Dem approach to governance which says that all problems can be solved with targeted tax cuts - the only things holding the poor back are taxes and government assistance (which robs us of our dignity and incentives, incentives like hunger, homelessness and no access to affordable medical care).
Example three is about ethics, and Ian’s commenters in the 2006 post pretty much knocked that one down.
Thanks for that small confirmation of Lori’s claims. Say hi to the folks over at dKos.
I wish more people had read Obama’s words rather than listened to them. I’m not one swayed by oratory, but I do know many people are. I do understand the kind of mass psychology that takes place, too, at big speeches in big venues. But when you sat down and actually READ the text of the speeches — there was so little there. And when you read the text of the debates — there was so little mastery of … anything.
And when you read his own writings — his books — what was present was a very muddled reading of history and a very naive idea of politics. (Though that naivete really is shown to be false by his history of dirty politics.) Actually: they revealed a man whose thinking was clearly shaped by maturing during the years of Reaganism and by reading a whole lot of David Broder, and that more than anything is probably why the media so fell in love with him (assuming the directive didn’t come on high from the corporate masters.)
Still, I often hear from people that they are tired of “partisanship” and tired of all the “partisan bickering” and many thought Obama was a cure for that. I think too many people really fail to understand that politics, at its basic level, is about power and competing interest. Though I’m really not sure at all what they DO think politics is about.
The solution to “partisan bickering” isn’t less partisanship, it’s stronger and more effective partisanship. If there was one reason for supporting Hillary, it’s because she understood the nature of Republicans better than Obama did. She’s the one who named and called out the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
But over and over I was told that no — that kind of “fighting” makes us as bad as “them.”
Anyway, yeah: Obama was there for all to see. He explicitly stated that he believed Social Security should be cut. He explicitly stated that he would expand the war in Afghanistan and into Pakistan if necessary. He explicitly stated that he viewed Iran as a dangerous and immediate threat the US had to contain. He explicitly stated that he did not believe it was the President’s role to lead on the issue of gay rights. He explicitly stated that he did not support the mental health exception to the ban on third-trimester abortions. He explicitly stated that he would expand Bush’s office of faith-based initiatives beyond its at-that-time scope. He was never a progressive, or even a liberal.
Dandelion,
yeah, I think one of the main reasons I was able to hear what he was saying is that I didn’t watch his speeches, I read them. And when you read them they are both astoundingly empty and have a right wing understanding of the world.
He genuinely dislikes people getting worked up over issues. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants everything and everyone to be “nice”.
Me, too! I hate politics. I’m apolitical. Why must everyone else fight and argue? Why doesn’t everyone (else) just compromise and agree with my view of how to run the world?
If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise…
Can someone provide an example of Obama compromising on something after taking a public position? I do not know of any. He starts from an essentially republican position on any issue, get resistance from the nominal republicans, who want to hold chair positions in congress, and then he marches along unchanging. Compromise? Ask Kucinich. Ask Feingold. Ask any retiree after the election in November about cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
And which Obama did people listen to? Congratulations to Ian Welsh for listening to Obama’s actions in 2006, but most people listened to the candidate after he announced and started making speeches. As has been pointed out, that candidate’s modus operandi was not to compromise, compromise, compromise, but to lie, lie, lie, especially up until he got the nomination. Tell the primary voters many lies that he thinks they want to hear, and then disregard them on the Wednesday after the first Tuesday in November, 2008. (Remember the whole “There’s only one president at a time” spiel — this would only happen if you don’t strongly disagree with any policies that are in place. Otherwise, you tell people how those policies will start being changed the day that you get in office.)
Correction: The previous post should have been formatted as follows –
He genuinely dislikes people getting worked up over issues. It makes him uncomfortable. He wants everything and everyone to be “nice”.
Me, too! I hate politics. I’m apolitical. Why must everyone else fight and argue? Why doesn’t everyone (else) just compromise and agree with my view of how to run the world?
If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise…
Can someone provide an example…
I find that most people—especially Americans, and especially American liberals— have an “engineering attitude” toward politics. There is a Correct Solution that satisfies everyone (Sesame Street morality), good people can always get together and find an answer, so any acrimony must emerge from incompetence. Combine that with a huge amount of conflict avoidance and the practice of jingoistic silencing, and you see why people claim to be tired of “partisan bickering.”
@ArC
Yes, Lori is the resident Puma.
She’s deluded enough to think that things would be markedly different under HRC. I think so too, but for a different reason. She wouldn’t be as successful as pushing the neoliberal agenda, and she wouldn’t have a coat of teflon over her.
“If he gets into power he will compromise/compromise/compromise, because he believes in it - not as a means, but as an end.”
Right - except with anybody not a citizen, anybody who is serious about the constitution and related oaths, anybody who insists on habeas corpus, rule of law, and an end to torture.
This used to be the Incompetence Dodge: Bush is not an evil mastermind, he is just stupid. Then it became: The Democracts are just spineless and weak. Now it’s: Obama does not like conflict.
Bullshit. This should rightfully be called the Diminutive Dodge - uttering demeaning words about those who have absolute power over your life, in a futile attempt to belittle their power along with their alleged shortcomings in using it. The people who are doing the dodging are the sovereign - those that cannot muster the outrage and the will to end the Catch-22 that holds them, their children, and their children’s children.
Hostis humanis generis. Obama is perfectly capable of intrigue, pressure, blackmail, and brutal Chicago-style politics - lo and behold, he is capable of murder, torture, deceit, and a complete abdication of his sworn duties under and to the constitution. Ignore the words, believe the acts.
I have to agree there’s been wayyyy too much pop psychology paving excuses for demons like Bush and Obama.
They’re incompetent, in recovery, compromisers, feminine, macho, appeasers, pragmatists (WhateverTF that is), in denial, bad negotiators, etc. etc.
NO, they’re your coporate overloards flavor-of-the-month and they’re here to steal your shit. Your wages, your housing, your retirement, your social security, your public schools, your medical care, your medical care money, your prescription pills. your goddamn life.
And they’re working hard to make sure you blame another victim for your suffering: the immigrants, the boomers, the retirees, the black criminals, the welfare people, the unemployed, the underwater mortgage defaulters, the public employees and their pensions, the terr’ists, the druggies, your children, the homeless, whatever.
And for the most part, it’s working. There is no working within the Demo party, unless you’re a card carrying corporate criminal.
On to the Catfood Commission.