Note: I've learned something from the comments in this diary: Evidently, there is not just a hard-core contingent of people willing to pretend Obama did or didn't do things so as to make Obama look good, there is a contingent of folks who actually think it's great for politicians to make statements suggesting that their past promises - whatever those promises were - weren't serious. And I thought sycophantism went only as far as pretending up was down... - D
Back in February, I wrote a post about President Obama's dismissive attitude towards those who compare his previous promises/declarations with his current actions. At the time, he tried to add levity to the fact that he was appointing Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State despite the fact that the major point of policy contention between Obama and Clinton are their views on foreign policy.
This prompted ABC's Jake Tapper to wonder, "Are we supposed to act as if things politicians say during primaries are irrelevant and meaningless?" Now, this same question is relevant yet again, specifically on the issue of Cuba policy and trade.
Obama also dismissed Sunday his reversal of policy on the Cuban trade embargo as first reported by ABC News. When asked by an ABC reporter why he had changed his position from 2004, when he said the embargo had failed, Obama joked of a faulty memory. "2004, that seems just eons ago," Obama said. "What was I doing in 2004? Oh, I was running for Senate, there you go."
The administration has no present plans to reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to add labor and environmental protections, as President Obama vowed to do during his campaign, the top trade official said on Monday.
These are both pretty bad on the substance, but the Cuba example is particularly awful on the rhetoric. Obama, the guy who asks us to hope and to see him as a post-partisan icon of integrity in a post-cynical era, is offering up the most cynical kind of message: He's pretty explicitly saying that past campaign promises aren't to be taken seriously, and really, anyone who does take them seriously is a dolt.
I don't think you can read that dismissive line about his 2004 senate campaign any other way - and I say that because substantively, nothing has changed in the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Had something really changed in that relationship between 2004 and now, Obama could easily explain his apparent shift on the merits. But since nothing has, he's basically saying reporters - and thus, the public - should know that things promised on a campaign aren't to be taken seriously. He's basically saying, "Ha ha ha, you didn't really think my senate campaign promises were serious, did you?"
And it's the same thing with the NAFTA shift - nothing has changed in the U.S.-Canada-Mexico relationship between the time campaign promises were made, and today. That means the shift is purely political - and that the promises are being scoffed at.*
This kind of message is, as I said, genuinely cynical - and really, inappropriate for any politician to express. If we're supposed to believe in democracy, then we have to take campaign promises seriously. Thus, when politicians explicitly tell us that they themselves don't take their own promises seriously, that undermines all the foundational assumptions that our democracy is built on. It's one thing to offer up a logical reason for changing positions - that's AOK by me. It's quite another to change positions and then laugh at people for thinking you were serious about your original position - that's gross.
It doesn't matter where you come down on the NAFTA or Cuba issues, what matters here is that if politicians tell us they believe their campaign promises are a joke, then they make our whole political process a joke. And that's particuarly true for Obama, because his whole image is based on asking us to believe in his integrity. The fact is, you can't sow hope and cynicism at the same time - those two don't go together.
* By the way, I still hold out hope - based on the White House's rhetoric - that even though Obama is going back on his promise to reopen NAFTA, there will nonetheless be progressive trade policy changes soon. Likewise, I'm definitely encouraged by Obama's moves on Cuba, even if he is not yet lifting the embargo. But the point of this post, as noted, isn't really about the substance - it's about whether politicians should scoff at/ridicule their own promises, whatever those promises may be.
SIDENOTE: Why every time Obama breaks a promise, do some people insist that A) he has some secret Pony Plan to reverse breaking a promise B) that those upset about broken promises just don't "understand" what's happening C) that Obama is being misquoted or D) that apropos of nothing, he's at least better than George W. Bush. Have we become so deluded that we can't acknowledge broken promises for fear of offending the Dear Leader? I mean, Barack Obama may be the first (or perhaps only most recent) American politician in the world to break promises and have hordes of sycophants angrily insist he is fulfilling those very promises. It's actually amazing!
STATE BLOGS
