Salon.com > Obama's First Year

Meet the leader of the Obama witch hunt

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 21:11:00 +0000

How Darrell Issa will conduct the vital business of the House Oversight Committee when he takes over as chairman isn't clear yet. When the California Republican describes his plans in the mainstream media, he strives to sound reasonable, bipartisan and public-spirited; but when speaking with media outlets and personalities, such as Rush Limbaugh, he sounds like a hard-line right-winger aiming to revive the paranoid partisan style of the Gingrich era -- which would be more in keeping with the reputation he has already established. He displayed the fugue state that preoccupies him when he denounced President Obama on CNN as "the most corrupt" occupant of the Oval Office in modern times – and then withdrew that accusation with an apology.

Rahm Emanuel and “the enthusiasm gap”

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:01:00 +0000

One paragraph, from Marc Ambinder, that explains why the sudden departure of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is an unambiguously good thing for America:

Emanuel obsesses about the New York Times, and stays in contact with a dozen or more reporters each week. Rouse knows many reporters, but he is not a schmoozer, an information trader, or likely to return late night e-mails with provocative subject headings. He won't be as accessible to the White House press corps, or to parts of it, as Emanuel was. Rouse does not share Emanuel's conviction that the White House must govern principally through the Times.

Rouse is Pete Rouse, the probable interim chief of staff. He is, apparently, not as much of a moron as Rahm Emanuel, who is under the impression that rich white coastal Democrats are the only segment of the base worth appeasing -- because they're the only people in this great big country that care what the Times says.

New Obama book reveals Pentagon quarrel

Mon, 03 May 2010 23:26:00 +0000

President Barack Obama reprimanded top Pentagon officials last year for pressing publicly for a troop increase in Afghanistan.

That's according to "The Promise," a book on Obama's first year in office by Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter. It goes on sale May 19.

The book says Obama laid into Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen in an Oval Office meeting last October.

Obama was irked by the leak of a confidential report by Gen. Stanley McChrystal calling for an expanded military presence in Afghanistan, and by McChrystal saying he could not support a strategy relying on special forces and unmanned drone attacks.

Obama was conducting a lengthy review of operations in Afghanistan at the time. He largely sided with the generals and agreed to deploy 30,000 more troops.

Salon Radio: ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 14:27:00 +0000

In October, 2008, the ACLU issued a report outlining the policies needed to restore civil liberties and America's constitutional framework in the wake of the Bush assault, entitled "Actions for Restoring America." On the one-year anniversary of Obama's inauguration as President, the ACLU has issued a new report -- pointedly and revealingly entitled "America Unrestored" -- which details Obama's record in these areas. Although there have been a few isolated bright spots (the DOJ's intensified domestic enforcement of civil rights laws), Obama's overall civil liberties record has been extremely disappointing, and this report from the ACLU (with which I consult) comprehensively documents the failures.

My guest today on Salon Radio to discuss the report is its Executive Director, Anthony Romero. I also discuss with Romero the Citizens United case and the ACLU's serious constitutional concerns about the type of political speech restrictions which the Supreme Court just struck down. Romero explains the substantial constraints imposed by such laws on the ability of non-profit incorporated advocacy groups (such as the ACLU) to express views on core political matters.

The tragedy of Obama

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:01:00 +0000

The key to understanding Barack Obama is one simple fact: He received more Wall Street money than his Republican rival John McCain and his rivals for the Democratic primary nomination. What did the investment bankers and hedge fund tycoons think they were getting for their investment? Progressive supporters of Obama might have hoped that he would turn the clock back before Reagan and promote a new New Deal. But Obama’s financial backers had no problems with the "Reagan settlement" that Bill Clinton had ratified in two terms, just as Eisenhower in two terms had ratified the "Roosevelt settlement." Obama’s supporters in the corporate elite thought that the country had taken the wrong course, not in 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan, but in 2000, with the election of George W. Bush. The second Bush had destabilized the post-1980 system, by becoming -- to the surprise of everyone who thought he would be like his father -- the tribune of the wacky neo-Confederate right. Obama’s task was to bring about a restoration of the pre-W status quo that would be acceptable to center-right Democrats and moderate Republicans, while keeping the wingnuts at bay and buying off the progressives with rhetoric and token gestures.

Ignoring gays, eroding his base

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Sure, there have been accomplishments by this president in his first year, as with any president. But the disappointments are more deeply felt, particularly by gay people like me.

Rather than moving boldly forward with his party's big majority in Congress, Obama set out from the beginning, on almost every issue, to bring Republicans aboard, seemingly at all costs. It was a fool's errand since the Republican Party has long defined itself as the party of "no way." From civil liberties and economic policy, to the war in Afghanistan and healthcare, Obama pandered to conservatives in his first year but has nothing to show for it except headaches for himself and his party.

Simply by virtue of being a Democrat, he has energized the right, which has allowed a fringe movement punctuated by paranoid, racist extremists to speak for it and often for the entire Republican Party. And yet, rather than use this to fire up his own base, Obama only alienated some of his core constituencies, pushing them away as he pursued people who in turn pushed him way.

The year of adjustments

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:20:00 +0000

The first year of the Obama administration was largely reactive. The new president and his team spent their time cleaning up the extraordinary messes left for them -- the financial crisis, the Great Recession, Guantánamo, exploding deficits, Iraq, deteriorating Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and attempting to tackle problems left unaddressed for far too long -- climate change and energy policy, healthcare reform, immigration reform.

In that regard the agenda of President Obama's first year was determined to a great degree by the Bush administration's strategic reaction to a global political and economic environment that has passed now. While President Obama cannot escape the governing inheritance left to him, he can do more to discard the outdated vision and rhetorical framework that came along too, and begin to offer a much more compelling, modern and Obama-ish take on the challenges ahead and how we must meet them.

The year of inverted socialism

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:01:00 +0000

From each according to his need, to each according to his greed. It pains me to say it, because I voted for him, manned phone banks for him, and gave to his campaign, but Obama (in truly flabbergasting cahoots with Goldman Sachs, the Citibank alumni club, and the jet-setting Ivy-League long-range-thinking all stars who love to convene at Aspen, Davos, Sun Valley and other ritzy spas and ski resorts to discuss, over cocktails, the global common good) has managed to perfect, in just one year, an ingenious socioeconomic system that might be called "inverted socialism" and which makes the free-market conservatism it succeeded seem, by comparison, principled and simple.

As though he believes that the best way to redress a ruinous, massive private-sector theft is to rehabilitate the thieves by putting them to work as Cabinet members and high-ranking public policy officials, Obama has licensed the bungling robber barons who managed to gamble away the loot amassed in their attempt to fleece the world to recoup their squandered booty by "borrowing" from the taxpayers and homeowners (lots of them former homeowners by now) the money that they failed to grab the first time -- and then lending, with interest, the borrowings back to them!

A disturbing failure to lead

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:01:00 +0000

Every new president sweeps in on a wave of promised change then disappoints his base when confronted by governing’s harsh reality. President Obama crested at such a high water mark that his plunge has been especially disheartening.

True, Obama faces so many enormous problems that he deserves some slack. Feminist Majority’s Ellie Smeal ticked off to me a dozen positive things he’s done for women and the AAUW congratulates him for forming the President’s Council on Women and Girls, nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court and signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

Still, he’s failed to exercise three essential aspects of leadership, not so much by what he’s done as by how he has done it:

He’s resisted staking out a concrete, decisive agenda. The first responsibility of a leader is to create meaning, and the executive’s most important power is to set the agenda. Having seen President Clinton falter on healthcare by presenting a full-blown bill to Congress, Obama presented no bill; hence the committee-designed "camel." Now, nobody’s happy.

One man can’t fix a broken country

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:16:00 +0000

A year into the Obama era, some progressives are feeling a mixture of sadness, resignation and disillusionment. Not me.

Instead, I am energized and hopeful that the administration -- and millions of regular Americans far from the halls of power -- have laid a sturdy foundation for a strong, equitable, opportunity-rich America for the 21st century.

To see where we're going, though, we have to remember where we were a year ago. On the day America inaugurated its first black president, this was the fourth paragraph of the New York Times lead story on the swearing-in, headlined "Obama Takes Oath, and Nation in Crisis Embraces the Moment":

"But confronted by the worst economic situation in decades, two overseas wars and the continuing threat of Islamic terrorism, Mr. Obama sobered the celebration with a grim assessment of the state of the nation rocked by home foreclosures, shuttered businesses, lost jobs, costly health care, failing schools, energy dependence and the threat of climate change."

A year ago, we were in a tragically difficult state. But since then, we have steadied our listing ship.

Did Obama win the Iraq War?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:21:00 +0000

President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated a year ago, and this is a good time to review his major foreign policy success.

It is, of course, important that he has repaired the reputation of the U.S. in much of the world and replenished the stock of "soft power" that has been so important a part of U.S. success and leadership. His approval ratings in Western Europe and even in Saudi Arabia were in the 80s and 90s this summer. Veteran journalist Tom Fenton confirms that he remains enormously popular in Europe, and that the public there understands that he could not turn U.S. policy around on a dime.

But Obama's biggest practical foreign policy success has been in keeping to his withdrawal timetable in Iraq. Most observers have paid too little attention to this, among his most important decisions. When he became president, his top generals, including Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Ray Odierno, reportedly came to him and attempted to convince him to modify the withdrawal timeline adopted by the Iraqi parliament as part of the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated shortly before he took office. They did not want U.S. troops to cease patrolling independently in mid-June 2009. They did not want to get all combat troops out by summer 2010. They wanted to finesse the agreement. Reclassify combat troops under some other heading, they said.

Great challenges make great leaders

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:19:00 +0000

Expectations of Barack Obama’s presidency perhaps have been unfair -- expecting him to deliver to a better place an America that had seen its military, economic and moral preeminence badly shattered during the preceding tenure of George W. Bush.

But great challenges are actually what make up the stuff of great leaders, and regrettably, Barack Obama -- though mesmerizing on many levels -- has demonstrated thus far more of an ability to deliver policy outcomes generated by inertia and incrementalism rather than changing the laws of political gravity, which is what he must do if he is to succeed in office.

Barack Obama can’t be measured by the same stick as most American presidents. He must be better and do more. We are at a time of historical discontinuity in U.S. history -- a point at which America’s global social contract with other of the world’s stakeholders must be renegotiated and when America must reinvent itself, its economy and its relationship with citizens on the domestic front. As Walter Russell Mead recently proclaimed at a New America Foundation event grading Obama’s performance, “Being president is really hard.”

Is it the man? Is it the movement?

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 23:18:00 +0000

What strange forces conspired to schedule a crucial, down-to-the-wire Senate race that Democrats can't afford to lose, almost exactly a year to the day after Barack Obama's historic inauguration? For Obama supporters, there's no time to commemorate the glorious events of a year ago. All that joy and promise has turned to dread and doubt, as a defeat for Martha Coakley on Jan. 19 could block Obama's signature policy initiative, health care reform. If she loses, Obama wakes up Jan. 20 to endless news cycles declaring his presidency, having lost its 60-vote Senate majority, either impotent or doomed. What a difference a year makes.

Against that backdrop, it was fascinating to watch the president take time to preach Sunday morning (just hours before stumping for Coakley in Boston) at Vernon Avenue Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., the legendary black church that hosted Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in December, 1956. I was surprised to see Obama lay out parallels between the struggles of King's movement, and his own.

Obama disconnected

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 01:20:00 +0000

If the history of American politics can be summarized as an ongoing battle between organized money and organized people, American progressives had reason to be optimistic that the victory of Barack Obama in 2008 might tip the scales toward the needs and interests of ordinary people rather than those of big money.

His campaign’s success in both the primary fight against Hillary Clinton and the general election against John McCain was powered by an unprecedented wave of mass participation. The numbers were staggering: 13 million e-mail addresses collected (20 percent of his total vote), almost 4 million individual donors (more than double amassed by President George W. Bush in 2004), $500 million raised online, 2 million registered members of the my.BarackObama.com social network, tens of thousands of trained organizers.