Peter Daou has a followup diary, "Liberal bloggers are bringing down Obama, part II: It's NOT the economy, stupid, it's Obama's character", and there's some I agree with, some I don't, but I want to focus like a laser on one particular part that I agree with, in order to take the argument further in the direction I think it needs to go--that it's not just about Obama's character, it's about the character of neo-liberalism, which Obama embodies to a remarkable extent.
Here's Daou:
Long before the American public rendered judgment on Obama's economic policies, a core group of progressive bloggers and activists were expressing alarm at everything from gay rights to Gitmo to torture, women's reproductive freedom to Afghanistan. They were essentially saying that Obama was betraying his implied and explicit promise to be the anti-Bush.
There's a lot of denial revisionism about this now, but at the time, the fact that Obama gave a speech against the war while other top Dems had voted for the AUMF was utterly decisive for giving Obama a huge leg up on everyone else: the anti-Bush. Continuing:
Over the past four months there have been a series of flare-ups between the Obama administration and the progressive activist community, centered mainly around the new administration's willingness (or lack thereof) to reverse Bush-Cheney's radical excesses in the realm of civil liberties, secrecy, detainee treatment, interrogation, and counter-terrorism.
Ever astute and incisive, Digby raises what I think is the critical point in this entire debate: "The argument against torture is slipping away from us. In fact, I'm getting the sinking feeling that it's over. What was once taboo is now publicly acknowledged as completely acceptable by many people. Indeed, disapproval of torture is now being characterized as a strictly partisan issue, like welfare reform or taxes."
Indeed, this was the whole point of holding people accountable for torture and other war crimes: It wasn't to be mean & evil partisans, as Obama seemed to think. It was to preserve our own humanity and save our country from the descent into barbarism, where torture is just another option--and who doesn't love options? Continuing:
Ari Melber, my former Kerry campaign colleague, takes a parallel tack, arguing that there should be no debate here; torture is illegal. Even Bush acknowledged that. Glenn Greenwald, an indispensible voice on this topic, says bluntly: "Ever since he was inaugurated, Obama has taken one extreme step after the next to keep concealed both the details and the evidence of Bush's crimes, including rendition, torture and warrantless eavesdropping."
As has been the case for years, Democratic leaders, operating within the Washington bubble, misconstrue the concerns of the netroots and often privately dismiss them as the rantings of immature outsiders and political neophytes. But as always, the progressive community, a far more efficient thinking machine than a handful of strategists and advisers, is looking ahead and raising a unified alarm. The message is this: anything less than absolute moral clarity from Democrats, who now control the levers of power, will enshrine Bush's abuses and undermine the rule of law for generations to come.
Of course the apparatchiks would be the last to know. They're always the last to know. Continuing:
Setting aside all the campaign slogans about hope and change, what Obama really signifies is a razor sharp break from Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rice, Rumsfeld, Addington, Libby, Bybee et al. After eight years of damage to the fabric of our Constitution and our nation, the entire point of a new face, a smart, youthful, inspiring Democratic president is to completely and totally reject the Bush years, to reject the lawless behavior, the Orwellian rationales, the blatant disregard of the Constitution. Neglecting to do so, and leaving any doubt about where Democrats stand on these issues, is profoundly detrimental to the country.
This was about Obama's character, not just his policies, about moral courage and conviction - and the lack of it. The right, led by radio blatherers and the still potent rightwing attack machine, had their sights on Obama's character from the very beginning. They were bent on destroying him. It's when the left began conveying doubts about his moral authority that the warnings signs should have started flashing in the West Wing.
The health care debate, with the left's profound disappointment over the public option and the right's overwhelming antipathy to a "government takeover" permanently defined and enshrined the previously inchoate impressions of Obama as a man whose obsession with conciliation rendered him incapable of taking an unshakable stand in defense of his principles.
The nub of the insight, in short, comes from May 2009. It's not the least bit new at all. And the health care debate is not where it started. It's just where it got played out on the big screen for all to see. But it was all there in embryonic form in his embrace of Bush's torture logic. And even that didn't start back then. It started with his FISA flip-flop. As soon as he switched sides and said, in effect, "It's cool for corporate America to violate the Constitution in cahoots with the President," Obama had gone over to the dark side. If that was cool, when what could possibly be wrong? Answer: Nothing. Only getting caught.
Such complete immoralism made Obama a true son of Nixon.
But Obama was not alone.
Indeed, his actions--and the reasoning behind them--are perfectly consistent with the over-arching trajectory of neo-liberal thought. The only thing that really set Obama apart was his ability to appear not to be one of the same old neo-liberal crowd.
What is the "over-arching trajectory of neo-liberal thought" I speak of? Simple: Nixon said, "Boo!" and the neo-liberals jumped. The first to jump were not called "neo-liberals", of course. But what came to characterize those who came to be called neo-liberals was one thing above all: a visceral disdain for those they considered the weak-kneed targets of Nixon's wrath, including, of course, their own sorry selves waking up drenched in cold sweat in the middle of the night.
Daou himself put it more prosaically:
Obama and Democrats have undermined their own moral authority by continuing some of Bush's' most egregious policies ... Everything flows from the public's belief that you stand for something. The most impressive legislative wins lose their force if people become convinced you'll sell out your own values.
It would be unfair and silly to portray all Democrat politicians as devoid of moral convictions, but it's not inaccurate to state that there is a widespread phobia among Democrats of appearing "weak," which paradoxically leads to behavior that further reinforces that impression. When you fret too much over what others think, you tend to contort yourself in an attempt to please, often at the expense of your core beliefs. When the specific complaint is that you're weak, there is a tendency is to do whatever your critics characterize as strong - and in the case of Democrats, they tend to ignore the strength of their own values and emulate Republicans, ending up looking even weaker in the process. From gay rights to executive power to war to the environment, the left increasingly believes the Obama White House lacks the moral courage to undo Bush's radicalism.
Of course, we all know that. "We" being the DFH blogosphere that can see right through all this. But there's one part that maybe all of us don't see through, and that's the psychodynamic side that I sketched out above. Because, you see, the neo-liberals are very much animated by their own fears that they are the DFHs they love to beat up on so much. Indeed, one might almost say that there's something close to an exact parallel between self-hating closeted gay conservatives lashing out compulsively at open, proud, self-confident gays who don't see anything to be ashamed of in who they are, and neo-liberals as self-hating cultural/affective liberals lashing out at open, proud, self-confident liberals who don't see anything to be ashamed of in who they are.
Is that all there is to it? No, of course not. There's a vast, multi-factor policy dimension as well, and you can't fully understand what's been going on all these years by dealing with psychodymanics in a vacuum. But if you steadfastly ignore the psychodynamic dimension, there is no way in God's green earth that you'll understand the first thing about neo-liberalism, and why the Democrats are so profoundly screwed up.
Their problems are not rational, and not even just cravenly self-interested, although craven self-interest is certainly part of the mix. But it's not the glue that holds the center together. The glue is neo-liberal wound identity--a political identity based on a damaged core, ala the Fisher King, just as conservatism is likewise held together by its own special wound identity.
