Why Obama Won't Matter

It's all about the platform. I voted for Obama because I thought his platform of intervention and regulation in business, of not denying the desperate problem of global warming, of being pro-choice, of being less than arrogant toward neutral foreign powers, of progress in general rather than maintaining the status quo was in fact the better platform.

I never thought Obama could deliver on all he aimed to achieve. One's attempted reach should exceed one's actual grasp.

Obama will likely fail. What president has faced such difficulty? Lincoln and FDR had tougher jobs, certainly. Lyndon Johnson didn't do as badly as people thought but he sure seemed to. Nixon was not the monster that James Reston Jr. is convinced he was. Is.

The fact of the matter is that there are far worse things than Vietnam and Watergate. The are rather piddly when we forget about days at Berkeley or Columbia. The revolution was only on TV. In reality there are things like the auto industry that physically made all of this possible. There would be no Vietnam without Henry Ford's obsession. Nor would their be much in the way of a Berkeley or a Columbia to protest it. There were very few hippies protesting the Spanish American war. Today the hippies are every third woman or man. The hippies have cut so deep they are all of us except for Fox News and James Dobson.

So history rolls on despite which fads kick and scream the most. If Obama wants to get into the real gearworks of current history he is going to have to stop appointing people like Hillary Clinton or leaving Robert Gates at the Pentagon. It is not because these people are terrible. Far from it. But bringing in friends of your enemies or leaving the old guard in place is a sign that you don't want too many fights. That's politics. You can't pick your battles. You have to win them all. It is exhausting and stupid but that's the game. If you want to come out healthy at the other side of eight years you shouldn't play at all. It will chew you up and spit you out -- if there is anything left. My examples of Lincoln and FDR left their administrations in boxes both.

In a sense Obama himself doesn't matter because the culture war has been put on hiatus with his election and because history will get made no matter what. Yet, it he fails to win a second term he will become more important than he can possibly imagine. Why is that? Because of who will replace him. Huckabee/Palin looks scary to me. They would throw us back into the thick of a culture war. They would try to return to Reagan Era deregulation. They would not give a shit about the environment -- and we are running out of time to mitigate the effects of polar melt.

If Obama fails it will be because he is too conciliatory, to reluctant to fight. Limbaugh and other rightwing idiots tried to make Obama out to be this far left zealot. Far from it. He is too smart, too academic to think that real socialism could work in America right now. We aren't Denmark -- and for a host of reasons. Obama was never fool enough to want the impossible. But even so, he may want too little.

Part of Obama's desire to talk to Iran or North Korea may have been because he believes that giving people a break is the first real step toward reconciliation and healing. I would not be against talking to Iran or North Korea myself but I would never be under the illusion that talking could achieve much of anything there. Sure, Reagan talked to Gorby but we had some cards that really meant something to the Soviets. Iran and North Korea are not the Soviets. Their plain nuts. Obama's cabinetmaking seems to suggest that he believes forgiveness can heal political differences. I hope I'm wrong because that would mean Obama is the political naif many took him for.

twL