Natch

The hits just keep on comin'. I think we're pretty safe now in saying, "Even worse than Bush."

Cui Bozo? - Updated

Citing a soon-to-be-published NY Review of Books article by Elizabeth Drew, Krugman this morning calls out -- once again accurately (dedicated and articulate Cassandra that he is) -- the twofer political-and-policy idiocy of Obama and his enablers.

I look forward to reading the Drew piece -- she's a terrific and thoughtful reporter. But before that further fodder (thanks, Groucho), a thought:

Obama needs both parties to be seen as crazy. It is required for his self-conception and self-delusion as the only sane man in the room. He must be deeply terrified, really profoundly lacking in self-confidence, in a sense of self, to need this fantasy so strongly. But whatever the source, it is clear by now that it is in Barack Obama's self-perceived self-interest -- hence the pun in my title -- to posit a political landscape equally polarized between ideologies.

Problem is, the Dems aren't crazy; they're feckless, but they're not batshit. So he winds up ignoring them in practice, leaving them out of any negotiations. And the "negotiations" aren't any such thing. They're all about him, about how he will get to appear in their wake. The policies and principles involved are of no interest. The real-world outcomes are of no interest. He is entirely willing to abandon foundational things, to cut into supporting beams. He is walking around inside a fantasy world in which his success inheres in where he stands on the stage vis a vis the others there. And it must be alone.

As a result, the evisceration of the Democratic Party isn't just collateral damage, it's the point (albeit the still-unconscious point) of all this kabuki. This is what we PUMAs said during the 2008 primaries -- we grokked how dangerous this guy was to the Democratic Party, while the putative leadership of the Democratic Party ushered this fox into the henhouse.

What will come of this "disaster" (to quote the Krug)? The GOP won't be hurt, it'll be enormously helped -- but, in my view, even that isn't the goal. The goal is to establish the sui generis, above-it-all, new-paradigm cult of the Precious.

And that, of course, is mad as a hatter.

Update: The Connie Bruck piece is out. It lays out the full scope of the disaster that is this presidency, and this president.

Dump the Dems?

When I saw this, I was encouraged. When the governor of my state led this, I was moved. I am a lifelong partisan Democrat.

However, I’ve become convinced that the Democratic Party, as currently constituted, is more part of the problem than of the solution. So it needs to be reconstituted. And I’m thinking the only way to do that is to abandon it in 2012. The current leadership and structure of the party are addicted to their post-Vietnam fecklessness and caution, and it may be that the only way to save it is to go cold turkey. My beloved Democratic Party needs some tough love.

I hope somebody primaries Obama – and I would love for it to be Hillary. I can even imagine a scenario like 1968, where an unknown from the left, somebody with basically no resume, a la Gene McCarthy, opens the door… and then an electable star (Hillary, playing the role of Bobby Kennedy) walks through it. Is there any doubt that Bobby would have won the election if he had lived? Is there any doubt that Hillary would defeat anybody the Republicans nominated?

But I don’t believe that will happen. And if it doesn’t, I have come to think that it’s vital for the real Democratic Party to surgically remove the cancer represented by Obama, before it irreversibly becomes that cancer. And if some surrounding Congressional and Senatorial tissue has to be removed at the same time, so be it.

We can disagree about who and what Barack Obama actually is. I don’t personally believe he’s a diabolical genius of the right, but rather a personal and political cipher. An invisible man – to go all dramatic-irony on ya. He’s a fiction writer, the creator of the character “Barack Obama,” described with an adjectival and metaphoric vividness – “audacity”… “fierce urgency”… “hope”… etc. – that couldn’t be farther from the reality of whatever person is buried deep inside him. There’s a good chance we will never know that reality – that he himself will go to his grave never knowing it. In fact, it’s kind of haunting that this modern-day Chauncey Gardner seems entirely and permanently cut off from reality. There’s something deeply spooky, almost psychotic about his convivial smoothness, casual style, preternatural self-control… in the context of such a profound disconnect.

But that’s a topic for less urgent psychological and historical reflection. The matter at hand is that he is doing deep damage to the Party, the country and the world. The President of the United States at this inflection point in the global economy and in our broader history needs to be a force for progress – not just to keep the U.S. competitive, but to use America’s standing and capabilities to help crystallize a new global era of greater openness, prosperity, interconnection, fairness and sustainability. We need to make real progress, ergo a real progressive.

Of course, this was knowable – by many of us, it was known – in 2008. We knew we needed FDR, and we knew this guy was at best Jimmy Carter. Probably the most accurate analogy is the one Anglachel has made, and that Krugman has lately been substantiating: from a policy perspective, Obama is Herbert Hoover. The enraging spectacle of the Democratic Party embracing that and rejecting a serious thinker, doer and leader – with the accompanying misogyny, frat-boy shallowness, smugness, trickery and disenfranchisement – was simply awful… never to be forgotten.

But that’s water over the dam. The question is: What do we do now? The cards are on the table. It is no longer possible to pretend that Obama is a real progressive who is doing whatever can actually be done in a bad world. When our putatively Democratic president is pushing hard for policies to the right of the majority of Republican voters… when he is repeatedly dealt strong political hands that he invariably tosses away or misplays… when he runs the U.S. economy into the ditch again and again and again… we need to get him out from behind the wheel.

It would surely be godawful if we had President Michele Bachmann… or President Sarah Palin… or President Newt Gingrich. It would be deeply depressing to have President Mitt Romney. But – and here’s the key point for me – I don’t think it would be materially worse vis a vis the economy. It’s a danger re the Supreme Court, and re civil liberties, and those are non-trivial. But they can also be repaired. And with regard to the social safety net, I believe it would actually be harder for a Republican president to eviscerate it than for this “Democratic” Herbert Hoover. Nixon, China and all that.

Anyway, the point, finally, isn’t this person. The point is the Party, and whether it will matter to the world. If the Democrats are to return to political and policy relevance – much less innovation and progress – they need a swift kick to the gut, a slap upside the head, a bucket of cold water. The election of America’s first African-American president was a wonderful, historic event – but now we’ve done it. We passed that symbolic milestone. Now, we have work to do.

The summer of our discontent - Update

Looks like the economy speech was not a new awakening, but an aberration. We're fucked. Millions of people will suffer grievously for our phony Democratic president's appeasement of this. How long is it before we'll see Obamavilles popping up all over America?

Update: This is what selling a sell-out sounds like. When I've compared Obama to Hoover or Coolidge, it was primarily a statement about fecklessness. But now, it's looking less like an analogy and more like a conscious policy choice. We elected this guy, it seems, to undo the New Deal and return us to the state of affairs under Coolidge and Hoover.

In the mornin', in the evenin', ain't we got fun?

Update 2: This whole spectacle is excruciating to watch -- regardless of your view of Obama's motives. Whether he's a walking cypher being pushed around by batshit crazy bullies... or a Republican in his heart who is engaging in (increasingly ineffective) kabuki to carry out his financial masters' agenda... it's not just enraging, but also humiliating. One wants to turn one's eyes away from this playground scene.

A wonderful night to be a New Yorker

Historic, and truly moving.

At long last

Thank god. Obviously, there's ample reason to believe he won't fight hard for it -- but at least he's no longer negotiating with himself in public. At least he's finally attacking his/our opponents -- acknowledging that they are opponents. At least he didn't do the plague-on-both-your-houses crap.

And yes, the plan itself doesn't go far enough (e.g., no Medicare for all). But credit must be given where credit is due. At least he has finally done something politically smart. At least he has finally edged toward "I welcome their hatred," called the Ryan plan out for what it is:

"This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. Ronald Reagan's own budget director said, there's nothing 'serious' or 'courageous' about this plan. There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill. That's not a vision of the America I know."

And at least he has committed himself not only to the veto, but to a different kind of discourse:

"To meet our fiscal challenge, we will need to make reforms. We will all need to make sacrifices. But we do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in. And as long as I'm President, we won't."

"... let me be absolutely clear: I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations."

"... we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again."

Seems to me Barack Obama has just won the 2012 election. And if we're really lucky, if he can grok the import of what he himself just said, maybe this is even a step toward redeeming his presidency.

Op-idiot

What is one to make of Ross Douhat's column today? One could use it as evidence of an individual's stupidity and lack of knowledge. One could say that the Times is down to Krugman and the seven dwarfs. Or one could generalize it to the hermetically sealed foolishness of the Beltway. Or one could take it all the way out to the devolution of discourse in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Whatever your preferred flavor of head-scratching and/or outrage, I would note that among the silliest attempts of this silly man's silly piece is its attempt to apply the 'liberal vs. conservative' frame to this set of facts. One could point out that the approach critiqued here was that of Bush Pere (and, for that matter, of St. Reagan, who never actually deployed any force anywhere for anything of consequence). One could point out that Bosnia and Kosovo didn't work out badly, in the end -- while one is pointing out that Iraq and Afghanistan haven't worked out anywhere near as well, either from a humanitarian or US strategic interests standpoint. One could point out that the broader historical pattern, for good or ill, is for liberals to be more interventionist than conservatives (FDR, yo? Robert Taft, yo?).

Or one could just bang one's head on the desk.