For the life of me (4.00 / 1)

I will never be able to understand Obama's obvious fetish with rich and powerful center-right corporatist white men. I just don't get it. On issue after issue, he just can't seem to help himself in his zeal to win their approval with these center-right corporatist policies like oil drilling and backroom deals with AHIP and PhRMA. He's the freaking president. Why he needs anyone's approval is beyond me.

And yes, I do believe that it's psychological, at least in part. Ego is always a factor in politics.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 11:44:21 AM UTC

He is a corporatist man. (4.00 / 5)

Maybe only half white, but he likes these people and agrees with them and he's largely built his career over agreeing with them (despite his marketing campaigns).  That's been obvious through most of his career.

See this Adolph Reed, Jr., quote about Obama going back to 1996:

In Chicago, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program--the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle-class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics.

As well as this piece on what Obama did for healthcare in Illinois (shorter version: gutted it for insurance companies).  And, of course, there's always been his love affair with Exelon and coal, so I don't think his favoring big energy over the environment should be any shock.

Obama didn't have much of a record, but the one he did have - beyond empty phrases like "community organizer" or "consitutional law professor" (which Gibbs now denies, btw) - was thoroughly corporatist, as was his economic proposals during the campaign.

This is to me a very important point.  As John Caruso recently pointed out when talking about war protestors in the age of Obama:

The problem with Obama is that far too many people-even those willing to give up a Saturday afternoon to protest his wars-think of him as an ally who needs to be persuaded rather than an enemy who needs to be opposed.  Yes, there's much in Obama's background (and self-promoting literary output) that suggests that beneath that cool, calculating exterior bleeds the heart of a true liberal, but nonetheless, no, he most certainly does not share your values-unless your values include extrajudicial executions, throwing bushels of money at the military, saying "the CIA gets what it needs", and blithely kissing your own children goodnight as you're vaporizing other people's kids thousands of miles away.  Then he's your kind of guy.

Obama is not going to be persuaded, at least not by arguing with him or calling on him to live up to his ideals.  He does not need therapy, at least any more than any of the rest of our leading elites.  Obama will only be persuaded by giving him no other option as a political matter - to make his political future depend upon it and that requires that people oppose him.  

Even then, I'm not sure.  I've almost come to believe that corporate money is so important to Democrats, they'd rather lose elections than lose access to it.  Look at Chris Dodd, still screwing us on behalf of the banks even on his way out the door.  That he isn't being quite as open about it as the GOP is little comfort.

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by: BDB @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:18:49 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I substantively disagree with none of this (4.00 / 1)

But my question was really several steps removed from all this, focused more on why people like him choose such paths, than what kinds of paths they choose. There's this whole generation of Dems who have opted to sell out to rather than try to meaningfully reform the status quo and money and power establishment, but, because they're Dems who need to appeal to genuine liberals (as well as pseudo liberals such as themselves who are nevertheless too vain to admit it), continue to pretend to be genuinely liberal even though they're clearly not.

And I'm wondering why. Is this the inevitable next phase of any reform movement, wherein its nth generation inheritors continue to prop up the external forms of reform for the sake of appearances even as they proceed to dismantle or exploit their predecessors' reforms to serve their own personal and professional needs and ambitions, and is Obama merely the slickest and most successful product of this generation? And is such a thing truly inevitable?

For as long as I can remember, I've always loathed this sort of person, i.e. someone with the talent and background to do good things, who claims to want to do good things, yet who ends up selling out while continuing to pretend to be trying to do good things. I mean, if you're going to screw the rest of the world as you look out for yourself, can you at least have the guts to admit it and own up to it? We thought we'd elected FDR. Instead we got...Aaron Burr?

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:34:22 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Ah, I get it now. (4.00 / 3)

I'd say there are a number of things. First and foremost is the farm system - the parties select these folks, including Obama (he didn't just happen to end up at the 2004 convention or with being a big favorite of hedge funds early in his primary camapaign).  There are a whole series of institutional punishments/rewards built in (and I think you see that in an extended way in the blogosphere).  

With the decline of labor and the co-option of some of the some of the other democratic bases (African American organizations, women's organizations, gay organizations), there's also a lot less pressure from the left for them to move that way.

And, of course, we've given up journalism for propaganda, making it even harder to organize and direct communities to push the power structure left.

I just finished reading Yves Smith's ECONned (if you haven't read it, you should) and she does a very thorough and damning job of laying out how over the course of the last 40-50 years, public policy has been moved largely by economists driven by "free market" ideology to see the world through an economic prism where outputs are the prime goal and people are consumers and not citizens.  The damage to democracy has been severe and it infects every aspect of our lives (I hadn't quite realized how far spread the damage until I read the book, which is dense but worth it).  

Ian Welsh has made a similar point to yours (one that I agree with) which is that this entire generation of elite is a waste of space.  We've got to get rid of them and replace them with better or else we're doomed.

And while I voted for Obama, I did not think I was getting FDR (I have a rule about distrusting anyone Chris Matthews loves, it's never failed me).  I hoped I was getting Nixon.  I've been very disappointed.    

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by: BDB @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 13:20:19 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Excellent points all (0.00 / 0)

Justifiably or not, I like to think of myself as someone who can see through hype to the substance (or lack thereof) beneath, aided by a decent BS detector. Obviously, it failed me as I was one of those people who, while not infatuated with Obama, thought that he might have the makings of being a truly transformational leader on the order of an FDR or LBJ, because he seemed to be that smart. And who knows, maybe he IS that smart, at least in a book smart sort of way. But clearly, whether due to lack of character, guts, or governing intelligence--and possibly all three--he is not likely to become such a leader. Sad.

I also suspect that he's an example of the modern phenomenon in which people with superior natural intelligence have become functionally stupid as the result of growing up and being educated in a world in which outcomes, not process, are most valued (thus his faith in test-based education). Our educational and cultural systems have done this to such otherwise very intelligent people. They've also messed with their value system, in which personal rewards are valued more than societal good. It probably takes an especially perceptive and strong person to not get worked over by such influences and turn into one of these soulless technocratic corporatists. And Obama doesn't appear to be such a person.

Again, it's just sad that someone with so much talent doesn't appear to be able or interested in using these talents to do maximal, and not merely minimal, good, whether due to lack of interest or courage. He's obviously doing a better job than Bush, but that's not an acceptable threshold. We need better. And until we find someone better (or Obama decides to become better on his own), we need to push him to do better.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 21:22:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, the dynamic that we're trapped in is that those that have a desperate (4.00 / 1)

need for approval know how to get it. A quick skim of the DSM-IV criteria for the entire range of personality disorders will list "charming" again and again. This is not necessarily to say that all of our Dems are personality disordered, but there's certainly a spectrum that exists, where psychological damage will consistently engender immense charm and charisma.

So really it's incumbent to voters to thoroughly research candidates rather than to make personality based choices, but, of course, how many recent presidential elections can you think of where the most charismatic candidate didn't win. Part of the problem has to be that the corporate exploitation of its workers is self-enabling, i.e. as worker productivity has shot up, people are too freaking exhausted and spent to have the lingering discipline to conduct said thorough research. They look towards the glib candidate offering facile solutions, the one offering quick conclusions in 60 second advertisements, because they damn well need facile solutions. So corporate exploitation continues to grow and grow precisely because it's already there.

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by: sb @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 13:21:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Also (0.00 / 0)

I agree that if he's to move to the left on policy, he'll have to be forced to do so by effective pressure from the left, and not by gentle persuasion. Which is of course true of nearly any sane and smart politician, which Obama is. He's a politician, not an ideologue, and, I believe, can be pressured to move left, if done right.

And I actually do think that on some level he does believe in certain progressive ideals and goals. It's just that he lacks enough courage and especially conviction to actually fight for such things. He is ultimately a product of his time, "left"-wing version, more raw ambition covered up with very slick PR than a real leftie. The other side has such types as well, e.g. Bush, Romney, Palin.

He will ultimately respond to whoever pressures him most effectively.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:53:56 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

True, but I would add: (4.00 / 5)

Another part of the answer is to detach ourselves a bit from the general and overblown American obsession with Presidential politics- a real progressive isn't going to win the White House in my lifetime or anybody else's here- and focus on local, state and Congressional races where we actually can do something to help inject more real progressives into the system.

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by: Steve LaBonne @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 13:01:30 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I agree (0.00 / 0)

But we've always been obsessed with the guy at the top. We are an impatient people obsessed with bright shiny objects, and that's what the presidency is. Not sure how to get past that. Then again, a mature and serious movement should be able to determine what are the most promising, rather than most obvious, paths to success, and then focus on them and avoid getting too bogged down on paths of at most partial likely success.

"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything...Mankind are forever destined to be the dupes of bold & cunning imposture" -- Alexander Hamilton

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by: kovie @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 21:27:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

It should be clear by now (0.00 / 0)

But I can understand about everyone with their eyes wide closed about him. Who wants to face that we voted a Democrat into office who's to the right of Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford. Nelson Rockefeller was more liberal than Obama. Why does he go hat in hand to the Republican leadership whenever he wants permission to pass legislation (bipartisanship)? Obama really, really wants more Republicans to vote for him. That's how he plans to govern. Get used to it.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain

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by: Stoic @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:08:48 PM UTC

"hat in hand to the Republican leadership" is kabuki theater (4.00 / 4)

Obama is pushing the policies that he actually wants enacted to please "big business" not get Republican votes.

Think about it. Banks and the health care industries covered. Now oil and coal.

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by: MO Blue @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 13:43:36 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

They go together (0.00 / 0)

He wants to for a "coalition" government with the Republicans so it will be easier to get his "centrist" (read non-liberal) policies through the system.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." - Mark Twain

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by: Stoic @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 15:14:43 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Shill baby, shill (0.00 / 0)

I'm sure all those conservative Alaskans will be sure to run right out and support Democrats because of it too. I'm SO done with Obama.

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by: Helzapoppin @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:50:44 PM UTC

As is not atypical, Douthat is baldly lying when he blames 70's (0.00 / 0)

overemphasis on therapy, and the church's consultation of psychiatrists (who, in point of fact, don't necessarily actually conduct therapy, which is more specifically the domain of psychologists.) From Douthat's own paper twelve days earlier:

"The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, the psychiatrist said Thursday.

"I said, 'For God's sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,' " the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, said in a telephone interview from Munich. "I was very unhappy about the entire story."

Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times."  

Douthat's entirely dishonest scapegoating of the psychiatric profession is morally reprehensible on so many levels, but I would single out what Amanda hasn't: victims of sexual abuse often become perpetrators of abuse, so to malign psychiatric and/or psychological treatment for the abused, the only known mechanism for ending cycles of abuse, is to enable and encourage generation upon generation of abuse. So just who's the "permissive" one here, Douthat?

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by: sb @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 12:51:48 PM UTC

So thoroughly disgusted with Democrats (4.00 / 1)

Seriously, Obama could slaughter puppies on live tv and most of the Dem blogosphere would praise him for his cunning political brilliance.

I'm so out.

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by: Helzapoppin @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 15:37:52 PM UTC

Thanks for the Social Security Link to Angry Bear (0.00 / 0)

But the definitive post on how Obama stacked the Commission was put up by Matthew Skomarovksy  the other day:
http://www.alternet.org/story/...

It is worse than you can imagine.

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by: Bruce Webb @ Wed Mar 31, 2010 at 17:46:22 PM UTC