Grand Unified Obama Theory

Great Debates
1

I am part of The Obama Paradox. That paradox is that supposedly:

And yet Obama’s poll numbers keep going down, and even former gung-ho supporters such as myself are feeling lukewarm about him. Various elaborate explanations are offered, yet from my own perspective I don’t think anything so complicated is necessary. As I see it, Obama has backtracked on quite a lot of promises, from removing inmates from Guantanamo to punishing those responsible for torture to making meaningful reductions in carbon emissions, just to name a few. So Obama has kept some promises while flagrantly breaking others.

But which ones? Looking over the list of promises kept and promises broken, I have come up with the following Grand Unified Obama Theory:

When facing an issue, Barack Obama tries to predict whether a liberal stance on the issue will be meaningful to most Americas. If so, he fights on the issue for as long and as hard as necessary. If not, he drops it completely.

For example, Health Care Reform has the potential to provide better health care at lower cost for ordinary Americans. Financial reform may actually impact ordinary pocketbooks. Supreme Court nominees will play a large role in all kinds of issues that many people care about.

By contrast, issues such as torture, Guantanamo, wiretapping, and the like are major flash points for relatively small numbers of people, but the great mass of Americans do not toss and turn at night worrying about them.

(Note that my Grand Unified Obama Theory is different from saying that the President follows the polls on every issue. Obviously there are many cases where he has not.)

2

No, I don’t think that’s accurate at all. Guantanamo got dropped because politically he couldn’t make it happen. Congress started pitching a fit and whatever popular support there was for it (outside of the left) dried up as soon as people started talking about Terrorist Prisons in Your Back Yard. And another beloved issue on the left, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, still hasn’t happened even though he’s gradually moving toward it.

3

Could it be something so obvious, at least in part, as the relentless hammering he’s taking from the right wing media which have grown even more powerful since Clinton’s reign?

4

Obama has backtracked on making meaningful reductions to carbon emissions? He’s been trying to get an energy bill through Congress with cap-and-trade more or less since he got in office, but a minority of Senators won’t let it through without filibustering. I don’t really see how that’s “backtracking”.

5

Yeah, don’t you wish we had a 'popular" president like Reagan again?

Popularity polls mean so much when you need them to attack the other side don’t they? Too bad facts get in the way.

6

Why do you keep assuming that everybody is a conservative? It’s getting ridiculous.

7

Presidential candidates always over-promise. When was the last time you heard a politician stump on the promise to do “X”, provided Congress will let him? They campaign as if they were running for absolute dictator. It’s always like that.

8

Not all promises have been kept. The Obameter from politifact.

9

There’s a strong propensity for people’s approval rating of government to be based on not specific issues, but the general feeling of how the country’s doing.

It doesn’t matter what promises Barack Obama has or has not kept or whether they’re liberal or moderate; what matters is that the U.S. economy is still struggling to recover and unemployment is still high. Talking heads ad dedicated partisans will argue that it’s Bush’s fault, or Obama’s fault, or maybe even the fault of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan on Congress or Arabs or whomever, but it makes little difference at all whose “fault” it is; Barack Obama’s the big cheese, and so Barack Obama will take the hits in opinion polls.

As to whether this matters less than halfway through his first term, it probably means nothing. The only poll that matters is the one that will take place in November 2012. If you think a poll 22 months in means anything, well, just look at the history of Presidential approval ratings at this point and re-electability. It means jack squat.

10

As someone viewing from outside america, the situation with obama is quite puzzling.

Most of the right-wing media’s swipes at him are lame personal attacks (OK, we had a fair amount of this during Bush’s reign too) or are knee-jerk attempts to try to find fault with whatever he does, even when it’s policies that were supported by the GOP.

And then from the left there are no shortage of opinion pieces, like the OP, that say something like “He hasn’t done anything significantly wrong, but X”, where X is different every time.

Again, from my outside america POV, I quite like how he’s willing to go against public opinion, and getting “obamacare” through was quite an achievement, even if it had to be watered down.

11

IMO, Obama learned a lot from history. I think he’s emulating FDR – knowing when to jump on a bandwagon, when the Undecided will favor or can be led to favor some program, when it’s worthwhile to push something controversial anyway, when “it’s not railroading time yet”, and what is just plain unaceptable now or in the foreeeable future. – and acting accordingly.

Also, consider that typically a non-incumbent will say things, and mean them, based on his knowledge as a candidate, then discover that things are not quite so cut and dried as he thought when he is elected and privy to more information.

12

I’m not an Obama supporter, nor was I a hater; I was roughly equally disappointed with both major party and voted for neither. As such, I think my perspective is a little different and I’ll have to disagree with you. When he was running his campaign, I think he genuinely believed he could accomplish most of the promises he made, but I think the larger problem is that he made promises not realizing just how difficult they would be to accomplish. As such, some stuff that he thought he could get done, once he got into office and saw how entrenched it was, he just couldn’t make it happen.

Also, he only has so much political capital, he can’t push through sweeping change with a limited amount of it. As such, he had to prioritize which changes he wanted to get done. For instance, universal healthcare was something that was really important to him and he put it high on his list, and though I disagree with that choice I respect him for doing what he believes, but it cost him a LOT of political capital. I think some of the other changes like Guantanamo either can’t be done with his political capital OR he is afraid it’s not worth how much it will cost him and, thus, not be able to get other things done.

I’m unsure if he’s actually dropped the stuff completely or not, I think only time will tell. He might figure that he’ll have another opportunity if he gets re-elected or if the Dems come out well this fall.

13

Only the other side is predictable enough to fit into a theory so short.

14

Its the hysterical intensity of his opposition. And his failure to recognize it for what it was, and is. I take him at his word, I think he genuinely meant to reach across the aisle and create some compromise solutions, solutions that reflected the approval he garnered in the elections but did not run roughshod over the opposition. A sane, and sensible approach to governance, one he expected would be fairly received, even warmly. After all, he ran on his agenda, and won big.

Look at the opposition to his various nominations. A relatively small point, governance-wise, but telling. The Pubbies fight his nominations with hysterical intensity, clawing grooves into the linoleum as they are dragged kicking and screaming to an utterly ordinary and mundane function of governing. And when they finally get to a vote, the nominee passes with a very comfortable margin.

How does this make any sense? If the nominee is so hideously awful that they will fight tooth and nail to prevent the nomination from coming to the floor, how does it make sense that the nominee will pass with nary a word?

Obama depended on dealing with the same old sensible Republican party, your father’s Oldsmobile. What he didn’t get was that those Republicans had lost their power with his advent, they were gone, and the only Republicans left were the hardest core of the hardest core. Every time he reaches across the divide, he has to count his fingers to see how many have been bitten off.

15

FDR actually took stands on things and did the right thing to do. Every single time.

Imagine Obama making a speech like this one, which FDR made in 1936 :

For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.

For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace誼usiness and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me and I welcome their hatred.

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3yV4xb_pL-oJ:history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html+fdr+i+welcome+their+hatred&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk
Imagine him using rhetoric like “I welcome their hatred” Now that’s a real class war for you.

My Obama theory – he’s basically a moderate DINO. He could quite easily belong to either party aand he’s spending his presidency doing the bidding of enough powerful interests to secure a very lucrative Clinton-like second life after his presidency, so he too can afford to blow three or four million when his daughters get married.

It’s a real shae that he isn’t a radical anti-establishment socialist, because that’s what America needs a bit of right now. Or an indepedently wealthy patrician-type guy like FDR who doesn’t have to be a corporate servant because he doesn’t need their money when he leaves office.

16

So you don’t believe Democrats exist? That’s an interesting position.

17

Damn near! The menshivik, “business friendly”, Clintonista, Blue Dead Deg leadership of the 90’s rendered Dems into Republican Lite. Not that I’m pissed about it, or anything.

18

Effectively they don’t. There used to be a solid union base to the party but a while ago they decided they just couldn’t compete in national elections unless they went all out for corporate money. Now enough of them that matter, and effectively all the guys who get anywhere near leadership positions, are as bought and paid for by various corporate interests as their GOP counterparts. When Dems are in power they act like moderste Republicans and when Republicans are in power they act like right wing Republicans.

19

What makes you think he’s failing to recognize it?

He got elected. And in 2012, barring a dead girl/live boy surprise, he’ll be re-elected with ease. He is getting as much of his agenda passed as any President. You’re not giving him enough credit. He’s not stupid and he knows precisely what he’s up against. I assure you there’s a method to everything he’s doing.

20

Its the kind of mistake an intelligent man makes, to overestimate the prevalence of reason. Obama is right and his agenda is intelligent, and would produce great benefit for our country. Because he is intelligent, he tends to think the other guy is intelligent as well, and would be swayed by reason and a sincere effort to bi-partisan governance. He thinks, or more likely, thought, he was being opposed for actual reasons, and, having the better case, more evidence and sounder reasoning, they will see things his way. Being an intelligent man, he cannot fathom the depths of irrational hatred he is confronted with.