Obama's First Year: It Could Have Been Worse
AFTER OUTRAGE, disappointment is probably the easiest emotion of the left. I am always disappointed before the fact, so as not to be too disappointed afterwards. Right now, though, I am resisting disappointment. Granted, Obama’s first year has not seen a radical transformation of American society—not even the transformation that Roosevelt wrought in his first one hundred days. But there is a reason for that. Roosevelt came into office after three years of severe depression and frighteningly high unemployment. The country was ready for radical experiments. Obama came into office after only a... More
Obama's First Year: The Great Overlap and the Stall
IT IS an ancient assumption that tribulation is the threshold to deliverance. George Bush’s rule was so deeply ruinous in so many different ways and for so long that his successor’s campaign automatically lent itself to messianic hopes. It wasn’t that Barack Obama declared himself the messiah—to the contrary—but that many of his supporters tended to project onto him all their pent-up desires, while he practiced not only the politics of overlap but the politics of strategic vagueness. (“Hope.” “Change.” “Change You Can Believe In.”) It was as if in Barack Obama all the desires inter... More
Obama's First Year: Who is Obama?
GRANTED WE projected our fantasies onto him. But it wasn’t just that we deluded ourselves; it was more like a tango, a seductive dance in which we both played a part. We needed to believe, he needed believers. We were a perfect match: our hunger and his promise. After eight years of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Yoo, and the rest, he was like the coming of spring after a treacherous winter—the embodiment of a new era, a new politics, a sense of redemption and renewal. His name was Barack Hussein Obama, and he was the perfect vessel into which to deposit our progressive hopes: a sl... More
Obama’s First Year: Why He Deserves a More Enthusiastic Endorsement from the Left
THERE ARE two sets of questions one must ask about the first year of the Obama presidency and its disappointments. First, to what extent is the discontent on the left the product of Obama’s own hesitancies, limitations, and proposals? And to what extent are his low poll numbers and the obvious skittishness of Democrats and liberals a product of a program that is inadequate and misdirected?
Second, to what extent are the difficulties of the Obama presidency the product of forces and structures outside his control—the political opposition, the dysfunction of American political institu... More
