Greetings Dr. Westen and all readers, and welcome.

One of the consistent questions in this are seems to be was this the “real Obama” to start with, or did the demands and truths of the job hit him like a brick wall once inaugurated? Any thoughts?

Welcome, Dr. Westen–so glad you could join us today.

I don’t think any of us really knows. I worked closely with the campaign for a long period of time, read his book Dreams from my Father, saw him speak, and thought he was a progressive. I have no idea whether he’s a progressive, and I’m not clear what he believes in on almost any issue, other than that he’s for some form of health care reform that he can sign and call a victory that will have some good things in it (elimination of pre-existing conditions) but for which he’s pushing for some very negative, right-wing provisions, like taxing working and middle class people so the upper 1% don’t have to pay more taxes. I think his biggest problem is his conflict aversion, and he seems to feel that he doesn’t have to worry about conflict from the left. I think readers of this blog would believe otherwise.

Dr. Westen, I hope you can give us some insight as to why Obama is apparently clueless about his role in gutting the Democratic Party. And thanks for being here.

Thank you Dr. Westen. Your article is a must read for anyone interested in the failings of this Administration and it is refreshingly free of any conspiracies as to who does what in this Presidency.

You list as one of President Obama’s failings is an inability to actually fight regarding certain issues, or more precisely his inability to fight entrenched interests. Why do you believe that the President fears Big Insurance (and other moneyed groups) more than his base and the left in general? What can be done in order to force him to fight?

Thanks, Twain, happy to be here.
He is clearly taking a wrecking ball to the Dem Party. The only thing that can save it in Nov is that the GOP has so many people retiring, and they’re in such disarray, that Independents have nowhere else to go. But the danger is obviously both low turnout among Dems, which will lead to GOP victories all over unless he changes courses, but also his having turned off most Indeps. From what I gather from people who’ve been there, you get in a bubble in the WH, and you start rationalizing things like falling poll numbers.

That certainly seems to be a fair take. One of the things, a corollary I suppose, that really eats at me is Mr. Obama’s proclivity for actually being pretty clear on certain issues – FISA, public option, state secrets, etc. – and then when he does an opportunistic about face, scolding those who call him on it by saying “Listen, that is not what I said or that is not what I ran on” when, in fact, that is exactly what he had done. Pretty much in your face duplicity with the attitude that anybody that dissents is irrelevant.

I think he fears conflict in general, and if he doesn’t get some therapy or a very big change of heart, he’s going to compromise between the public interest and vested interests on every issue, as he’s done thus far. He’s been just as obsequious to the bankers.

A very astute friend of mine tried to convince me (2007) of how great obama would be as a President. My friend had read the Audacity of Hope and was star struck. I told my friend that nothing that he had actually done to that point indicated that he would act in that capacity. obama has done less than what I expected from him. Perhaps it was his time as a community organizer getting people to work together.

I read Dr. Westen’s article when I saw that he would be here. It is as good of an analysis of obama as I have ever seen. Thanks.

Echoing BMAZ’s “job hit him like a brick wall” idea, how much of Obama’s seeming retreat from the agenda he laid out during the campaign might be the result of both the financial crisis (which was not wwhat he signed on for when he first began running) and the resurgance of Al Q in Afganistan?

basiscally the US he inherited on Inauguration Day was a very different US than the one on the day he announced he was riunning.

I’m wondering if htat dramatic change in background conditions helped those arounf him (cough, Rahm, cough) convicne him that the plans he had mde before and during the campaign, were now obsolete and must be jettisoned in favor a more “pragmatic” approach?

Not that I would agree that dumping allthe ideas that inspired a nation to make history by voting for you is even remotley pragmatic in application.

Dr. Westen, I’m wondering if yesterday’s need for medical treatment for a couple of the baggage handlers in Bakersfield when the “suspicious liquid” turned out to be honey might be an indication that we are about to enter what Simon Wesseley would term a chronic phase of mass hysteria in response to a combination of fear-mongering and the attempts to de-legitimize Obama. Does that seem likely to you?

(And thanks for being here today.)

As a purely political matter, do you think the Obama administration just didn’t get that the Republicans and some independents would be unhappy with whatever he did, and that he would have been better off, politically, with turning towards his left base, since they would at least be enthused and with him? Seems to me he didn’t understand that someone’s ox had to be gored, and he didn’t choose.

It’s funny, I never thought about it until two of you have commented or asked this question, but I suspect the reason his conflict aversion only seems to lean rightward is that he thinks the left is irrelevant and hence there’s no conflict. In the minds of the WH, the left has nowhere to go. That’s not how Bush, Reagan, or FDR treated their base. It’s a dangerous strategy, it’s a condescending strategy, and it loses the middle, because it makes him look unprincipled.

Conflict aversion seems a strange bedfellow for someone who has objectively risen to the top of the political profession. Is that an expression of systemic norms? While the UN’s head is elected by a different constituency, it, too, seems to prize compliance and caution.

A related question is does Mr. Obama seem to be doing a Kissinger, in that he is able to speak in such a way that many people in the room thought they heard what they desired, rather than what the speaker meant?

In any case, Mr. Obama’s conflict aversion seems to crater the odds of his implementing effective strategies to improve the lives of Americans. He leaves us with the least common denominator (your words?) possible in this craven, divided Congress.

He’s been just as obsequious to the bankers

In the same way that Cheney salted the Shrub admin with his own people and neo cons (especially at the 2nd and 3rd tier level where the real work gets done) it seems tobe that Goldman Sachs and other big banks have done a good job of salting the Obama admin with their people.

Which in both cases, explains a lot

Thanks for being here, Dr. Westen.

It’s fascinating to me that someone who fears conflict as much as Obama appears to would even WANT to be President.

i realize that’s not a question, btw.

I’ll stop sounding like a broken record in a minute, but I think his fear of aggression and conflict is a severe character issue in a President, and he just couldn’t–and can’t–seem to get that the golden mean between good ideas and bad ones, the public interest and special interests, and what everyday Americans need and what big business wants, is not what the classicial philosophers meant by the golden mean.

Arlen Specter does that every day.

Your comment about conflict aversion reminds me that I thought some time back, ugh, we’ve elected another Dem from a broken home with an oversized need to please and go along to get along. That’s probably too much dime-store analysis (and too disparaging of both Clinton’s and Obama’s mothers), but is there something to this in any way? Is there a need for approval from a certain kind of mentor that trips them up? And what in his makeup makes Obama averse to conflict from the right side, but so willing to stiff-arm the left? (Typical of most modern national Dems, but some parts of the ’08 campaign made me think BO more politically savvy then this.)

I think he’s largely created the divided Congress. If he had come out of the gate with a strong populist message the way FDR did — we’re no longer going to sacrifice the security of the American people to the bankers, the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, or the energy companies–the wind would have been at the back of every Democrat in the country. It was his unwillingness to use the language of aggression and blame for wrongdoing that split the Democratic Party.

And the WH endorsed him over Joe Sestak.

That would imply a naivete at odds with his rise in Chicago and Illinois state politics and his (admittedly few) years in the Senate. Mr. Obama seems intellectually exceedingly capable. Like many of us, it is his emotional framework that prevents him from acting as he claims to intend.

Thanks for your work, Dr. Westen. Your book was a doozy and very much needed, as is your take on where we all go from here.

I’m forming a dread that Obama and his advisers actually think that ONLY by working with the corporate sphere can they get anything done. I have never seen such bent-kneed obeisance to corporate forces in a Democrat in my life. I suppose you could argue that by buying off (or, I would say, letting himself be pwned by) Pharma and HealthInsCo he avoided an epic firestorm of Harry and Louise ads during the effort to come up with this dogs-breakfast of a health bill. (I do resent his refusal to fight for elementary fairness, though.)

So the Left is going to want to strike back at him somehow, and that MAY show up as diminishing our support for Dems in general. My question to you is, given that Obama is NOT our friend, how do you see the progressive left standing up for ourselves and our principles in a way that does NOT end up giving the game away to Republicans?

Bingo! And it is a hell of a powerful movement and base he had coalesced and ginned up. Like the frontier preacher, he holstered his guns and put them away once he rode into town; now he is getting shot up and the townfolk who brought him in the first place are pissed. Symbols have to stand up.

Thanks for coming o the Lake.

Q.: I recall reading somewhere early on – well before the election – that Obama had built the initial coalition which made his bid plausible around the same lines as the coalition used by Chicago Mayor Harold Washington when he broke the color line in that city in the early 80s: liberals (who he sold out), blacks, Jews, and the financial industry.

Looking ahead, do you agree with the proposition that Obama is likely to be remembered in much the same way as Washington is now: an ineffectual placeholder who made no changes and occupied the office until the next generation of the Machine’s eponymous family (in Chicago, Daley and in D.C., Bush) is ready to take over?

(And I won’t even go into the whole Harold Washington in womens’ underwear painting and dying of a heart attack things….)

Dr. Westen

Thanks so much for being here, I’ve been looking forward to this. Your article really opened my eyes and articulated some of the frustrations I’ve been feeling. My concern is the attacks on progressives coming from other Dems when we even so much as question the Presidents politics. Do you have any insight on that for us? I comment on another blog and get hammered all the time when I post negatives about him.

Yeah, thanks for that. Heh heh, exactly!

So – political miscalculation?

That aversion must make him putty in the hands of people he allows close to him. Rahm Emanuel, for starters. It must do the same with other top players in Washington, which is renowned for attracting a large number of predators, who would smell the prey.

In response to the questions about how someone so conflict averse and afraid of aggression could want to be President, I’ll avoid psychoanalyzing from a distance. But I have to say, I think I read Dreams from my Father wrong. I read it as a masterpiece of what Erik Erikson, the psychoanalyst, called identity achievement after a long period of identity confusion. I now thing his resolution to being black and white was an inability to see that not all things actually do come in shades of gray. Goldman Sachs should not be running our economy. I don’t endorse the Manichean vision of Bush, but sometimes there are bad actors and you have to call them out, not let them run the country.

Dr. Western, is it possible that during his first security briefing after the inauguration, Obama was told in no uncertain terms to “toe the line” or else? We do have a history of a president who did not properly toe the line who met with an unpleasant consequence.

Hi Dr. Drew –

Look at one of Obama’s best friends: Cass Sunstein. There’s a lot of “Nudge” thinking going on in this administration, when there are very bright lines about what needs to be done these days.

If he campaigned like he’s governing, he wouldn’t be President.

I just can’t get past duplicity at this point frankly.

Like minds…

Obama is hemorrhaging support because he is a Blue Dog corporatist. The Democratic Party is sinking as well both because of its own corporatism and the failure of “liberal” legislators to do anything more than strike the occasional pose. Democrats will lose in 2010 and they deserve to lose.

I think he’s largely created the divided Congress. If he had come out of the gate with a strong populist message the way FDR did — we’re no longer going to sacrifice the security of the American people to the bankers, the health insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, or the energy companies–the wind would have been at the back of every Democrat in the country. It was his unwillingness to use the language of aggression and blame for wrongdoing that split the Democratic Party.

Yes! Yes! Precisely! And I actually think that the Democratic Congress was looking for that (they really looked to be waiting for him to blaze away, when he did not, they went back to status quo), and the people were dying for it. But it never came.

Thanks for the article Dr. Westen. Best read on the subject so far.

Where do we go from here? How do progressives force our way out?

Dr Westen,

Obama doesn’t really care about policy anymore. He was Sales & Marketing for 2008. Besides, now he has a lifetime pension of $1.5M annually whether he gets re-elected or not. That’s what’s important to him.

Anyone from Illinois could have warned people that he was an unknown and quiet person from his years in IL politics. And he hasn’t changed.

Dr Westen –

thank you so much for joining us today – have had the privilege of following you since February, when Digby recommended your work:

The major lesson learned is that the Democrats have just succeeded in taking a mandate, a landslide presidential election, and a super-majority in the House and Senate and handed over all power to a legislative tribunal consisting of three moderate Republicans in the Senate (and perhaps Joe Lieberman, whose face was prominently displayed on television over the last couple of days), who are now in a power-sharing arrangement with the President of the United States and the majorities of both houses of Congress. They are now in the position to scuttle, alter, or place limits on any legislation the Obama administration proposes

that’s right firedogs, February

For me the fear of action might not be so much an aversion to conflict as a fear of failure. Though consider this, he was the top of his class at Harvard and head of the law journal, he could have had any job under the sun, but chose instead to be a community organizer and a law professor. In a way that is nice to give back to the community, but it is also a sign of someone not wanting to do the dirty work of a lawyer. It could also be someone sandbagging their potential. Most of his races have been slam dunks and one could argue that the presidential race was a slam dunk (the only contest being the primary) and in the primary if he lost then he wins by being next in line and not expected to win, or he wins. Again a fear of failure.

I think that will be deemed by historians as one of the great lost opportunities in American politics. We didn’t lose more than a generation of progress to assassinations, as we did in the 1960′s, we lost it to the holes in one man’s psyche and the predators who were there to fill the vacuum.

I’ve wondered about that, if Obama’s ascent was so rapid that he set his sights higher and higher until he found himself in the highest office without a realistic plan for governance, with little pertinent experience in the act of governing, without a core set of principles (everything is negotiable), and lacking any genuine desire to be president. Granted, the perks are good, “Now watch me while I make this drive.”

Obama and Rahm are terrified of the corporate and institutional money power, and have decided to gain and maintain power by co-opting it instead of knocking it down.

I think the only way the President is going to listen to the left is if we put him in conflict about it. I’m very concerned, for example, that he’s going to use his support of the upper 1% over union members who negotiated health care instead of salary as demonstration that he can “buck” his “special interests” on the left. I hope if that’s the case the unions will tell him privately that if he does that, he’s eliciting the nuclear option, and they will enlist a primary opponent for him in 2012. He needs to know there are consequences for dissing gays, women and couples who have the right to decide when to start their families (what abortion is really about), people who are having their homes foreclosed, etc.

And the erroneous conclusion they will draw from the experience is that they need to move farther to the right.

My apologies for falling so far behind already in responding! I’ll keep trying to keep up…

That’s my biggest worry. Clearly the WH thinks that if you tack right, you win the center. That hypothesis has now been disconfirmed. Unfortunately, I’ve watched the brains of people as they deal with failed hypotheses, and it usually strengthens their belief in them. So I would expect them to tack farther right, thinking that’s how to win the center. The reality is that if he would lay out what a progressive vision for American is in his State of the Union Speech, he could turn his presidency, the hopes for Dems in 2010, and the country around. But everything he’s doing is going against that speech.

Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s the way we roll here. ;-)

He is simultaneously blackmailing/leveraging the unions with the illusory promise of EFCA in the future.

I’m not sure he actually expected to win in 2008. I think he thought it would be good experience to run and he would be next in line after Hillary won or lost the general. But once he caught fire with Dems, it would be stupid not to go all in. Also, does he really even have a governing philosophy? The impression you got is that he would surround himself with people, get their opinions and then think real hard. As nice as it is to have a reflective president, it is more pure pragmatism then it is any political ideals.

Unless he turns things around, I fear the same thing. His inaugural address should have been a direct assault on the Reagan ideology that government is the problem not the solution. He should have said that we’ve now seen what happens when you take that to its extreme. He speech shoudl have been about how politicians have too long been running on the question of how big or small government should be, when true leaders should be running it well.

Dr. Drew,

Do these teabags make my butt look fat?

I think we have alot in common with our single chromosome brethern but I don’t know how to reach them?

Any suggestions?

The reality is that if he would lay out what a progressive vision for American is in his State of the Union Speech, he could turn his presidency, the hopes for Dems in 2010, and the country around.

doesn’t this presuppose a desire to create a progressive agenda, though?

I think his biggest problem is his conflict aversion, and he seems to feel that he doesn’t have to worry about conflict from the left

This is fundamentally untrue. A lot of opposition to Obama is coming from the left and he and Rahm don’t give a rat’s ass about it. At the same time, even knowing that Republicans will end up voting no on his legislation (because let’s face it that’s what they have been doing all year), he reaches out to them anyway.

How is it conflict aversion when the only options for Afghanistan are how much to escalate by? How is it conflict aversion to take single payer off the table from the start, and to consider the public option just a bargaining chip to be dealt away? How was it avoiding conflict to give trillions to bankers even though it infuriated ordinary Americans and to give those same ordinary Americans in trouble almost nothing? Nor has Obama had any problems pursuing Bush legal theories on state secrets, limitations on habeas, immunity for torturers, military commissions, rendition, and indefinite detention, all of which are quite radical.

The truth is that when Obama wants something he isn’t conflict aversive at all. The things he hasn’t fought for he hasn’t wanted to fight for. I do not understand what purpose it serves to keep making excuses for him.

The problem is wider than Obama.

It is also the blogosphere.

How many months were lost in the “another outlier” denial of the erosion of the Democrats in the polls?

Now it’s too late to win back the independents, largely libertarian, who pushed the Dems over the top in 2006 and 2008.

For them, after all the insults and smears from lefties, now it’s personal.

The hagiographical diaries actually destroy the intellectual usefulness of the blogosphere. Groputhink and cliqishness don’t just apply to the smearing of Jane Hamsher and FireDogLake.

No, the same techniques were used against Kucinich, Gravel, and Ron Paul. Remember the “black face” smear against Jane Hamsher? It is the exact same technique used against Ron Paul and the “newsletter” which supposedly proves he is a closet KKK leader.

As long as the teenagers are in charge, we are doomed as a nation.

Or intentional calculation. I think Obama is disdainful of the left in general, as a symbol of discomfort with privilege and the status quo. Mr. Obama has worked hard to achieve the heights of both financial and executive privilege and as the leader of the status quo. Middle America, however, is being blown away (in the weather sense) because Obama and his handlers crafted and won on a completely different message, one that was supremely opportunistic of the country’s needs, which he seems to have had little intention of attempting to meet.

As you say, he could not have contemplated this Right going along with any progressive change and was unwilling to confront them or counter their message. Ergo, he didn’t really want it.

I think he should “fire” someone on the Christmas Day Fiasco.
Do you think he will, or is that part of his aversion make-up?

I haven’t seen any evidence of ideals on any isssue. He’s kind of sort of against holding people without charges. He’s kind of sort of for giving consumers the option of choosing a health insurance plan not run by the insurance companies, but not enough to really mean it or put muscle behind it. I don’t believe he believes in Roe v. Wade. He clearly thinks it’s OK to have whackjobs with guns circle political events like townhalls, including his own, because he couldn’t even censure the NRA for that. When the public is overwhelmingly for repealing “don’t ask don’t tell,” he’s apparently not. I don’t see the core beliefs. There’s a difference between compromises policies when you have to and compromising your values. I don’t see that he can tell the difference, or if he can, he’s getting very bad advice.

Dukakis without the administrative skill.

Professor Westen,

I did not support Obama during the primaries because I saw a candidate who had great slogans and gave pretty speeches, but who could not present voters with a record to show that he could deliver on anything he was saying.

My opposition to him grew as he got closer to taking the nomination.

I was convinced that the Republican attack machine would take him down. And I wanted a Democrat to WIN. (I also thought that Hillary Clinton was imperfect, but that she would have been a far more effective candidate to go up against the Republicans and a far more effective leader, too.)

I came around and voted for Obama in Nov 2008. In his first few months in office, I even started to see him as having some decent leadership skills. He was winning me over.

But then the evidence mounted that he was not leading us in a new direction. He was not delivering on change. He partnered with big business and enabled regulatory theft on more than one occasion.

The health care fiasco sealed it for me.

If he doesn’t change in his leadership style and make significant changes within his administration, I don’t see how he can use slogans and pretty speeches to spin away from the record of failure in his first term and win reelection in 2012.

Thanks for saying what I wanted to say. I don’t perceive “conflict aversion” in Obama at all.

He promised change and is delivering status quo.

If Obama has a governing philosophy it is best surmised from the people he surrounded himself with, i.e. corporatists all, well except for the rare progressive who immediately gets thrown under the bus after being called out by Glenn Beck, or whose nomination receives no support from the WH and so will never garner Senate confirmation.

“I hope if that’s the case the unions will tell him privately that if he does that, he’s eliciting the nuclear option, and they will enlist a primary opponent for him in 2012.”

The time to talk primary opponents is NOW when there is still time for him change into the change he promised.

I read the article when it was first published, and again just now. Coincidentally in today’s mail is a survey from the DNC titled 2010 Presidential Survey and asking a bunch of questions about Obama and the Democrats, and ending of course with a donation request. I can’t wait to fill it out. I may borrow some choice phrases from Dr. Westen’s article.

Should he fear the left? Maybe the actual voting base that is the left, but the left in Washington caves so easily. Not just elected officials but many interest groups like unions also don’t have the stomach to actually call him out. I think the calculation really is where else can the left go? This argument is reinforced by the near daily stupidity of the likes of Glenn Beck and Congressional Republicans, not to mention the grim specter of Sarah! in 2012. They all falling back to the old tried and true method of getting Democratic votes, voting against Republicans.

Funny, I think a lot of teabaggers are just old fashioned racists and fascists–the kind of people who beleive that W was a great president. But what I think you’re driving at is that this should have been the year of populism from the left, not the right. It was reckless bankers who destroyed the financial security of working Americans. It was health insurance execs who invented pre-existing conditions. This shouldn’t have been an era of right wing populism. Dems should be picking up 25% more seats this year, not losting 30%.

Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush.

That sums it up for me.

Dr. Westen, do you see a way that the Progressives could reach this out-of-touch President? How do we make him stand up and fight for us, for the party and the country? Or is that wishful thinking?

Hi Drew…

With all due respect, I don’t feel comfortable with explaining all of Obama’s giveaways to the corporations as “conflict avoidance.” It may well be that he is conflict averse… but it seems to me there is something larger at work here.

I too saw him speak… and frankly it was his EXTRMELY fiery populist rhetoric that won me over.

He knew before he was sworn in exactly what issues he would be facing… his appoitments from day one were 180 degrees opposite of his campaign rhetoric.

To me this is calculated, not “deer in the headlight” conflict avoidance.

I believe he is a neoliberal… and always has been.

The thing I have the most cognitive dissonance about is how he seemed so sincere in his campaign speeches, and even Plouffe in his book states, that fighting for the middle class was numero uno and then get in office and make every decision against “Main Street.”

Either Emanuel brain-washed him from day one, or Obama is a neoliberal wolf in sheep’s clothing. And I must conclude it is the latter.

Your thought please? Thanks for being here.

I voted for change but all I got was another lying assh*le in the White House.

It’s a point I meant to make last night on Hardball but didn’t. He gave a tough speech–that was an improvement. But shouldn’t someone lose their job? And where are the prosecutions of Wall Street? I don’t know about you guys, but I worked hard for the money I put away for my kids, and I’m really angry about what happened with it so that a bunch of guys on Wall Street could perpetrate fraud and a bunch of guys like the people supposed to regulate them turned the other way.

The “Christmas Day fiasco” is a total breathless media and wingnut bloviation creation. The only breakdown was the result of failure of intel agencies and the FBI and DHS to communicate properly. This is an institutional problem, inherent and present for decades if not longer. This is NOT the failure of any one Obama administration official and none should be fired. Unless it is John Brennan and that won’t happen.

He’s mandating that he be opposed in 2012 from within his own party. Wouldn’t that force him further into his vulnerability and drive him to oppose the left harder rather than be seen to cave, that is, to deem its interests legitimate and worthy of government action.

And to you Rahmsters reading this for your bosses. This is not idle chatter. The needs of a hundred million Americans or more are going wanting, while the party of the people, the DemosCratic Party, ignores them while succoring a tiny minority with great wealth. That is not a sustainable formula for a representative democracy.

On Framing: George Lakoff made a few comments during the campaign that suggested that Obama understood the notion of speaking in clear moral terms to win the day and was taking pointers from his books. Yet the opposite appears to be true now. What happened in the transition from campaign to governance? Was it someone else who understood framing, not Obama?

Dr. Westen, I have mentioned this once before to you, but I took your enormously popular Psych 101 class while at U. of Michigan, and them letting you go to Emory was their dumbest move outside of hiring Rich Rodriguez.

Thanks for being here today!

My question is how do you think the progressive movement can build the lasting structures outside of a Presidential campaign so that we are no longer reliant on politicians that frequently change with the wind?

Dr. Westen, you write: “He just can’t tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.” It always makes me uncomfortable when people make bald statements about a politician’s psyche. Do you feel confident you understand the motivation for the President’s actions?

I heard Rahm will only stay 18 months. Do you have a candidate for a new
Chief of Staff?

I’m not sure he actually expected to win in 2008. I think he thought it would be good experience to run and he would be next in line after Hillary won or lost the general.

Exactly. He really should have stepped aside. Hillary offered him the VP spot. Remember him mocking that idea, saying that he was the frontrunner? He really should have taken her up on the offer. He seems to have gotten caught up in the notion that his would be a transformational presidency. And everyone around him fed him bs to reinforce the belief. But being a transformation president requires more than being an inspirational speaker.

In the 2012 election cycle we will be informed that Obama is the greatest populist since Jesus. If reelected he will immediately return to business as usual.

EFCA is perceived by the elites (as normally defined, not as defined by Rove) as fundamentally anti-establishment, anti-business and anti-wealth. A president with the personality Dr. Westen describes could never risk real political capital even to advance its chances, let alone secure its passage and implement it day in and day out.

By accident I was in the thick of a teabagger rally (the one were, uh, three million people showed up) and besides the signs for nullification, or watering the tree of liberty, or the perfervid conspiracy theories, I overheard people talking about credit card companies and banks. What a waste of massive justifiable anger.

He bears all the signs of a guy who never had to do anything for himself, and of a lawyer who never had to wait on the jury to knock.

His history wasthat of the good looking athletic guy who was really, really smart and got pushed ahead by everyne wanting him to do well. He might have started from modest circumstances, but his personality pushed him upward.

But, I don’t think he ever ran into an intractibl;e foe untl he became presdent. The case where the adversary wanted not to settle, but to have a decision. He never had to do the gut check – as we trial lawyers do – of whether he was willing to take the case to the jury and let them decide it, knowing full well he’d invested most, if not all, of his personal funds in the case and stood to lose them if his lawyering and case wasn’t persuasive enough.

Everything could be settled.

Until recently, I worked with a lawyer who settled everything. Everything. And, as I predicted to him years ago, a while back his settlements started getting crappier and crappier and he started getting fewer clients and the clients he was getting were less able to pay. The clients were drying up and the settlements getting crappier because he developed a reputation of being not-a-fighter. In other words, a fast-talking pussy who could be rolled into selling out his clients to get in and out of the cases quickly.

I think the leaders of organized labor, women’s groups like planned parenthood, the civil rights community, and some mainstream progressive voices on the left need to meet with him privately first and let them know he does not have their support in 2012 if he continues on the path he’s on, and that they will actively campaign against him if he remains anti-worker, anti-choice, anti-immigrant, and unwilling to talk about race the way he did in his Philadelphia speech. I don’t know anything else that can change the direction of the WH at this point. If he’s afraid of conflict and aggression, give him conflict and aggression. He responded quickly to Joe Wilson’s aggression during his speech to the joint houses of Congress by toughening the provisions against immigrants in a way that was absurd–and is actually not supported by 2/3 of the American people, who would rather have illegal immigrants but their own insurance than wait to take their kids to the emergency rooms at taxpayers’ expense. So if Wilson can get him to change course, maybe someone on our side can, too.

And who might this primary opponent be?

I suspect it means Obama is only comfortable with the Right and regards only the needs of establishment wealth as worthy of being met. I see that as being both conflict averse and being a closet Republican.

It’s about accountability, methinks

Then you will be ok when Rahm and Brennan have him get rid of Panetta at CIA and replace him with Brennan?

Because that’s where that train is headed.

Obama has yet to realize, although it has been apparent to many of us for some time now,that

“You CANNOT substitute a wishbone for a backbone.”

This is one where I support the President. The right wasn’t concerned that 9/11 happened right after–and as a direct result–of W’s long vacation on his Crawford Ranch. In this case, a guy blew up his underwear because Obama hasn’t had the time to revamp the Bush security procedures. But there was a real problem of message that is key here, when Napolitano came out to reassure Americans that “the system worked.”

Well, he did transform a few months after taking office!

That’s music to my ears.

Water looking for the strongest vessel. Water, alas, also always takes the fastest route down hill.

What choice do progressives really have in the end. I voted for Nader in 2000, and even though my state went overall for Gore so my specific vote didn’t elect Bush, I have always regreted that vote. Republicans really are worse than Democrats especially now that they have gone crazy. I am really angry with Obama but what can I really do about it? Everything we do seems to push the Democrats further to the right.

What a waste of massive justifiable anger.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

I agree with you, neo-liberal all the way. I think he actually thinks the way to improve the lives of middle class Americans is through friendly policies toward private enterprises. You know that top-down teamwork that never ever works.

I do worry that on the first day of his first vacation last August, he spent the morning playing golf with the Pres or CEO of UBS. That’s not a good sign about who his friends are.

Isn’t my choice, but the secondaey buzz is on Tom Daschle.

My concern is the attacks on progressives coming from other Dems when we even so much as question the Presidents politics. Do you have any insight on that for us?

My sister is very liberal, but in September when I visited she accused me of being a left-wingnut because I had soured on Obama (actually, the souring began with his FISA vote). She insisted that he is the best president in her lifetime. I’m not sure how she feels about it now. I would hope she’s waking up, but judging by the responses on those “other blogs” I fear not.

Right. That is the “illusory” part I described.

Great article…here’s something from Democracy Now this morning:

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. “I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism,” Nairn says. “But once he became president…Obama became a murderer and a terrorist because the US has a machine that spans the globe that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off, but he chose not to do so.” He continues, “In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year.”

Welcome, thanks for the chance to get to know the article and author better.

I enjoyed your article, bmaz, and don’t feel bad: although I’m a voracious reader, I don’t remember reading Dr. Westen’s.

Back in February ’08, I was volunteering as a researcher for Allan Nairn, just doing some simple Web-based work for an article he was doing on Obama’s speeches. It was clear to me, as I wrote to AN, that Obama was ringing the same ol’ cracked bell of liberty, American style.

Are you familiar with Cuomo’s remark, that we campaign in poetry, then we’re forced to govern in prose? The language of poetry is the same as that of myth, namely, metaphors. A metaphor is a vessel for going from ignorance to understanding. The effect of myths on a nation depends on the intentions with which they are loaded: passengers into life boats, or kittens into burlap sacks?

Therein lies the power of myth: to jack electorates to hell and back, sticking them with the bill in every way. Myths are not the same as lies. Lies are distortions about factual circumstances. Myths offer a way of seeing and being in the world.

What do you know of the power of myth? Did you know that Joseph Campbell lectured for decades for the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute? I see his lessons powering the weaponization of rhetoric.

How were we jacked to war in Iraq: by facts, or myths? The myths themselves turned out to be the real WMD.

How was our health care reform debate jacked: by well reasoned arguments grounded in facts? HA!

How did Obama justify his Afghanistan surge: with facts, or myths? I love Pepe Escobar’s take on Obama’s strategy:

For all his lofty rhetoric, Obama is still pulling a Bush, not making any distinction between al-Qaeda – an Arab jihadi outfit whose objective is a global caliphate – and the Taliban – indigenous Afghans who want an Islamic emirate in Afghanistan but would have no qualms in doing business with the US, as they did during the Bill Clinton years when the US badly wanted to build a trans-Afghan gas pipeline. On top of it, Obama cannot admit that the “Pak” neo-Taliban now exist because of the US occupation of “Af”.

Taking pains to distance his new policy from the Vietnam trauma, Obama stressed, “Unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan.” Wrong. If the official narrative of 9/11 holds, the hijackers were trained in Western Europe and perfected their skills in the US.

And even while he still emphasizes the drive to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaeda and deny it a “safe haven”, Obama is fully contradicting his own national security advisor, General James Jones, who has admitted that there are fewer than 100 al-Qaeda jihadis in Afghanistan.

The myth of al-Qaeda has to be exposed. How could al-Qaeda pull off 9/11 but be incapable of mounting a single significant attack inside Saudi Arabia? That’s because al-Qaeda is essentially a thinly disguised brigade of Saudi intelligence. The US wants to win “the war on terror”? Why not send special forces to Saudi Arabia instead of Afghanistan and knock the Wahhabis – the root of it all – out of power?

Robert Parry and Consortiumnews.com have had several excellent articles regarding the function of myths in political economies.

How Myths Can Kill

There also have been modern myths used to justify political decisions, whether on a grand scale or more narrowly.

For instance, grand theories about American “exceptionalism” have rationalized U.S. imperial interventions around the world, wars and covert actions that would have been condemned as aggression or even terrorism if carried out by some other nation.

A smaller myth, George W. Bush’s “successful surge” in Iraq, contributed to President Barack Obama following a similar surge strategy in Afghanistan.

Though the “successful surge” myth in Iraq is now a cherished conventional wisdom in Washington, the actual evidence of why Iraqi violence declined points to many other reasons – some predating President Bush’s 2007 order to send in more than 20,000 additional troops. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Explaining the Drop in Iraqi War Dead” and “Obama Pleases the Neocons.”]

Given this understanding of the power of myth over facts (at least when it comes to managing electorates), do you see Obama making use of it?

Now I’ll go read your article, Dr. Westen and re-read yours, bmaz, while you think about it.

I think his biggest problem is his conflict aversion, and he seems to feel that he doesn’t have to worry about conflict from the left.

I know this is the outer manifestation, but I think the problem may lie deeper. I think Obama is an arrogant contrarian, and reacts most strongly against folks and ideas that strike him as “simplistic.”

The problem, of course, is that he inherited a situation in which seemingly simplistic ideas are exactly what is required to clean up the apparently nuanced mess that simplistic ideas got us in in the first place. I think Obama takes great pride in dismissing simple answers while showing an understanding of complexity, and surrounds himself with very similar folks.

Restoring Glass-Steagall? Too simplistic. Public option the only way to bring competition to health insurance? Too simplistic? Use reconciliation because you have to, because Republicans will block you every step of the way? Too simplistic.

There is a supreme arrogance in Obama that everyone who is telling him what to do has it wrong in some important way — especially those of us progressives who have what seem to him to be simple answers.

I suspect it means Obama is only comfortable with the Right and regards only the needs of establishment wealth as worthy of being met.

That would be an equally valid description of (nearly) all Senate Democrats and most in the House.

But what I think you’re driving at is that this should have been the year of populism from the left, not the right.

Why not make 2010 the year of populism from the left? Obama should have led in 2009. But he didn’t. We don’t have a populist president, so a fierce populist activism on the left is exactly what this country needs.

Are you saying that, rather than partner with tea partiers, we should just ignore them, express our populist message, and welcome all who see it and are attracted to it?

Honestly, the left-right tactical convergence makes a certain sense, but too many on the left have a visceral reaction against it, which is, sadly, not too dissimilar to the reaction of many at the tea party rallies who shout against the left (‘socialism’) and Obama.

…I hope Rahm retires…he is a disaster.

That’s the million dollar question. If the system weren’t so rigged against third parties, I’d suggest a progressive or populist party to run a candidate whose primary message was “I’m for working Americans. I’m not against the upper 1%. I just think they didn’t learn to share in kindgerarten, and I’m here to teach them.”

dime store or not, have had similar thoughts myself, throwing in the bi racial aspect of the puzzle – and wondering how much of that is involved in the whole go along to get along thing

keep going back to the deals with the Stakeholders – thinking it wasn’t just about keeping Corporate cash out of the GOP, but it’s proponents may have sold it as as a means of getting over on his former colleagues by enriching them – skinny new kid brings home the bacon, all hail skinny new kid

there’s probably a better way to say this X~o

Bet on FDL opposing Rahm’s bid for elected office, even for city dog catcher. More likely, he’ll double his fortune with a few years on Wall Street, and buy a Senate seat from Illinois.

What effect will Dorgan’s withdrawal have? Does it send a signal that PBO better get on it now?

That is why you always take the loser cases and some of the best ones to trial and leave a noisy mark, and settle the others in between. Got to throw a few punches if you want respect though.

“He responded quickly to Joe Wilson’s aggression during his speech to the joint houses of Congress by toughening the provisions against immigrants in a way that was absurd…”
Of course he did no such thing , but I’d like to hear how you think he may have stopped it. What leverage do you think Obama could have used to prevent those who did?

Bring back fusion voting in the states and you could have a progressive party with power.

Hey msmolly, I quit fighting with them, just posting articles and blogs now but usually at night when there are fewer folks around, if you know what I mean.

Really…

I think an apt moniker for Obama is Reagan II or Reagan redux…

Read the great Rockridge Institute paper from 2007 on this very issue (sorry don’t remember title and don’t have link at the ready)…

But the author’s state that the neoliberal thought is that private entities can effect social change… and that is obviously the tack Obamuel have taken…

how’s that working out for us?

Whoever didn’t dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”

Oh, great, he is hell bent to make things easy on the greatest scourges the US Constitution has ever suffered adn you think he should evidence accountability by canning someone that wasn’t the fault like Napolitano? That is very fucked up.

It wasn’t easy for me either to sour on this President, and there’s a part of me that still hopes he can take a good look in the mirror and course-correct. I was very active in the campaign and gave some advice that made a difference at some key points in the campaign. If I had seen this year coming, I never would have done this. I thought I voted for a Democrat. What we’ve seen is a centrist Republican. The only thing I really see that differentiates him from what Bob Dole would have done is that Dole might have failed to push through even the unnecessarily weakened stimulus package the President pushed through–although Dole was a spokesperson for Viagra, so maybe I’m underestimating him.

Agreed, but the “system she was referring to in that quote did work; the quote was early and misconstrued and Obama has done little but leave her on a string.

aaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggg

@106

Pretty ironic that Obama cites Lincoln as one of his strongest influences.

Lincoln emancipated the slaves.

Obama has sold us into corporate slavery.

I agree. It would have been foolish and would have given a few terrorists far too much credibility, for Obama to have dropped everything and returned to DC because a single terrorist act failed. Correcting the gaps that allowed it to get as far as it did is hampered by the government’s, especially the spying and security services’, lack of credibility, which Obama is not rebuilding. He’s just giving them whatever they want with few limits. Of all people, those guys know the difference between backbone and a stiff suit.

We must be nearing the end. Thank you, Dr. Westen. You have an interested and informed audience here and we’d like to have you back. Thanks, again.

He should take a cue from Billy Martin, “Trouble follows Me”

He won’t fire anyone over this.

Remember, he hired Brennan, Bush’s stooge, even AFTER Brennan’s company was exposed in Passport-gate.

Dr. Westen, how does the progressive movement expand on the lessons of framing and moral language. How do we form an army of Drew Westens?

That’s what I’m sayin, that’s the power of myth at work. Kissinger was at State during the time Campbell was lecturing.

Cheney managed Gerald Ford’s defeat to Jimmy Carter. Round about that time, Campbell made the following remarks.

This echoes what you’re saying Cynthia, regarding the radical change from the time of Obama’s announcement to the America he inherited.

Joseph Campbell Audio Collection Volume 4 Man and Myth Disc 4 The Necessity of Rites

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: The old mythologies have to take care of this, they have to carry people from dependency through responsibility and being the one who’s carrying the universe, to somebody who isn’t wanted anymore. Well how did the old societies do it?

They had a wonderful idea: old people are wise. [Laughter] So everybody made believe, you know? “And here they were asked–” [speaking ponderously]; they had the council of elders; the senate. The society always found a way to get the thing in, and I’ve been um connected, in one way or another, in a kind of, you know, talking way, with the State Department for a few years now, and the uh people down there tell me that one of their great problems is, not to do the things that the ambassador, and president and Cabinet, tell them to do.

I can tell you, my dear friends [he chuckles], the State Department is a department of very learn-ed gentlemen, they know what to do. But they’re only agents. The directions come from these people who you know poured money into the Democratic Party for the election, and so become ambassador to this, ambassador to that, and they’re telling these people what to do, and I’ve heard it from many of them: “Our main problem is to achieve the work as slowly as possible in order to bring about as little damage as possible.”

These are the authorities, the old people. We haven’t learned how to handle them, but in the old traditional societies, they had learned, and the reason they’d learned was that nothing much changed anyhow, things were in the times of the old people about as they had been in the times when they were young. That’s not true anymore.

I suspect many people have been working on exactly that problem for the last several decades: how to handle the authorities. And we, the electorate, we’re supposedly the “authorities” here, but it’s obvious that we’re getting jacked.

If Obama does indeed take a “wrecking ball” to the Democratic Party, will he stand up and be accountable or will he try to shed that onto other people (Pelosi, Reid, various Party members)?

What made him think he was in any way qualified to be the President besides a massive ego and a pretty speech or two? Just askin.

What choice do progressives really have in the end.

Progressives don’t have to support Democrats. And yes, Democrats really are as bad as Republicans. Obama is continuing most of Bush’s policies so what is the difference? Obama is slashing Medicare in the healthcare bill and as I keep pointing out this is something even the Republicans never succeeded in doing. And he has Social Security in his sights as well. And those judges? He has not been appointing liberals there or anywhere. I don’t understand why progressives buy into this meme that while Democrats are bad they are not as bad as Republicans. With either of these our ship of state is going to sink. So again, what’s the difference?

Great points…I listened to Allan Nairn this morning on Democracy Now…fascinating (see comment # 99 before years). Cheers.

Nope. I don’t think Napolitano should go (Homeland Security is beyond fixing) someone in Intelligence should walk the plank…

No one is fired in Washington any more. No one resigns, either. Except for players who fail to get with the program.

Expand? How about just respond? The adm and dems in Congress have let the republican party control the airwaves.

Reposting my question from earlier:

Dr. Westen, I’m wondering if yesterday’s need for medical treatment for a couple of the baggage handlers in Bakersfield when the “suspicious liquid” turned out to be honey might be an indication that we are about to enter what Simon Wesseley would term a chronic phase of mass hysteria in response to a combination of fear-mongering and the attempts to de-legitimize Obama. Does that seem likely to you?

This is the central problem, as I see it. He could have been FDR but was too frightened, so he decided to be Eisenhower. FDR busted the paradigm of unregulated greed and created a 50-year realignment and a new paradigm, which even Eisenhower accepted and worked around the edges of. Reagan busted the FDR paradigm with “government is the problem, not the solution.” Obama fundamentally accepts that. He restated it in announcing his jobs “summit,” that “even in times like these,” we have to be wary of the role of government. Really? With 6 million Americans having just lost their jobs, government should sit back and we should worry that it’s doing too MUCH? This was what he needed to say to the American people on his first day of office: We have just re-learned the lessons our grandparents so desperately and sadly learned durign the Great Depression, that unfettered markets are not free markets and they are not fair markets, and that the purpose of government is to protect our health, our financial security, and the security of our children’s futures as much as our national security.” But he didn’t say that, and I think he either doesn’t believe it or is afraid that he can’t convince people of it. I’ve polled messages that speak to a different role of government, and he’s read those polls, so I have to believe that he’s really, in his heart of hearts, either just afraid of taking on Reagan’s legacy or just doesn’t believe that you need a strong counterweight to big business in a capitalist economy.

Don’t know if we are near the end but time for me to move on. Thank-you for visiting FDL, Dr. Westen.

These outcomes are as much a matter of systemic forces as individual personality characteristics.

I concur with Ian’s take on why this administration can’t govern in the wider public interest because those who “serve in government,” those who “pay their way into office,” and those who “report the news” are captives of a power structure dedicated to only one thing – preserving its hegemony.

Reference: http://www.ianwelsh.net/why-democrats-are-doing-electorally-stupid-things/

Napolitano would be the wrong person. It would set back reforms we rather desperately need, as no one, certainly not her replacement, would be putting sticks into hornets’ nests of established procedures and outsourced contractors. Besides, Obama seems afraid even to force the appointment of his head of TSA. He wouldn’t have the balls to fire Ms. Napolitano, unless the Republicans demand it. That would be different.

Miriam already did what you suggest and voted for Nader instead of for Gore in 2000. As she says, that didn’t cause the Dems to move to the left. Any suggestions on how to do that? (Oh, and remember, to get a viable major national party started, one that’s not just a spoiler, you’ll need a couple of billion, media access, and some hardcore management skills if you want results anytime in the next two years.)

“Don’t fully trust anyone until he has stuck with a good cause which he saw was losing.”

–Morton Blackwell

Then you missed the early news this morning, in which they dutifully reported that Obama wanted no fingerpointing or blame gaming, and in the next paragraph reported that (a) the underpants guy’s father had gone to the CIA and told them of his son’s radicalization, (b)the CIA had opened a dossier on underpants guy and (c) CIA had not shared its information with the rest of the government.

If you’re OK with Brennan – who was in deep with the legitmation of torture, among other things – then you might want to rethink your nickname, if not your way of thinking.

The reality is that if he would lay out what a progressive vision for American is in his State of the Union Speech, he could turn his presidency, the hopes for Dems in 2010, and the country around.

Would anyone believe him?

And he treats gay people like 3/5 of a person. He’s a brilliant man. He should understand history and his place in it better. He’s doing nothing for people who are poor or falling into poverty, either, and he knows that they’re disproportionately the same people who were once 3/5 of a man. That part I just can’t understand. Again, I don’t say this as a “starry-eyed radical leftists.” I work with nonprofits and candidates on how to talk with people in the political center. They lean left on every issue if you just talk to them about their values in their language.

You know I think Republicans would be worse, but not that much worse. The whole fear Republicans taking power has lost a lot of steam. Would John McCain have done anything different re: healthcare, fuck with the excise tax it seems at least very similar. Actually I think McCain would have been tougher on banks if only because he would get pissed, start firing and ask questions later.

I am not sure how long Dr. Westen has to stick around, there was originally only an hour allotted and he very busy. In that regard, I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Westen for joining us for the past hour and for the great discussion here and the fantastic article he authored. This discussion is important, critical actually, and must be continued and grown outward from here by each and every one participating today.

Not his words, no. He seems to be a combination of Joe Lieberputz and Arlen Specter. If he wants to run on that rhetoric, he needs a few actions in hand, not lack of action he attempts to recast with other rhetoric.

I thought Obama meant he respected Reagan’s communication savvy, but maybe it was actually more than that…

We have too many Democrats who accept the conservative status quo…

That is a fundamental question that gnaws at me: “Why is Obama so afraid of the FDR type of government that brought this country the greatest run in the history of democratically elected governments when the reason we are crumbling is because that very FDR foundation built on a prosperous middle class is crumbling”??

That suggests he’s still denying part of himself and his family’s past. They knew poverty and emotional dislocation, as well as dedication to education and achievement. The dots we’re connecting here suggest someone who doesn’t really know or accept themselves nearly as much as their image claims. Rather like Bush claiming to be a deciderer in a government largely run by his constitutionally but not politically powerless Veep.

You know that and I know that and we both know that from experience and learning lawyering the hard way.

He never learned those lessons.

I’m Irish but I never liked Brennan. He is a carryover, I thought Obama
should have cleared all the decks, but he didin’t…

Well said.

We haven’t talked about this a lot today, but this is obviously a central piece of the picture. I’ve met a lot of Congressmen and Senators. Most are not corrupt people when they arrive in DC, and most don’t want to be corrupt legislators. But I’ve also worked for underfunded congressional campaigns, where you lose because you can’t buy enough ad time on television and the earned media therefore don’t take you seriously. When you know that you need 2-4 million to keep your seat in the house and 2 or 3 times that to keep it in the Senate, you start making deals with the devil that you don’t consciously realize are corrupting your worldview. I don’t mean to excuse it. It was hard to hit “send” on the piece you all read today because, as a political consultant, I knew it would cost me to publish it. And if I had to face that every day of my political career, can I really say I’d never get unconsciously corrupted by my constant need for cash for the next campaign? We have to do something to take money out of the equation, because you can’t have democracy and organized bribery of public officials, which the Supreme Court is surely about to redefine as “free speech.” I’d like to have that kind of speech the next time I get pulled over for speeding…

Precisely. If Obama was smart, he would have been ahead of the Prop 8 trial set to start in California next Monday and ridden that forward. He was not smart on this, and was duplicitous from what he promised while campaigning. And it is all a fundamental matter of Constitutional human rights that a supposed “Constitutional scholar” ought to understand.

My guess is that it is because the establishment he has worked so painstakingly to join and lead has worked hard to overturn FDR’s legacy for generations.

That’s the disconnect Dr. Westen points out between his own family’s experiences and his adult comfort zone, which seems exceedingly establishmentarian. An old and common dynamic really, but one obscured by Obama’s rhetoric.

FDR was not afraid of them, he was one of them. Clinton was not one of them and he was afraid of them.

I read a long newspaper article chronicling Obama’s Illinois senate years and, frankly, he is now what he was then. I’m not at all surprised at his presidency, but I am angry at the wasted opportunity.

Putting aside the annoyances of his claque, where do those of us who want results go from here?

Well it’s like I said he had the grades, the school, hell everything to really be a powerhouse lawyer but instead he chose academia and community organizing. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but to be it seems like sandbagging. He just doesn’t have the stones.

Thanks bmaz. I just got texted that I’m late for a meeting. This has truly been a pleasure, and I’m honored to have had this opportunity to have this conversation. This is a great site with an extraordinarily thoughtful readership of people concerned with our country. I wish the President were an everyday reader. He’d get a different view of “the left”–and might decide to become a card-carrying member.
Drew

Quite the opposite. Obama has kept a high proportion of holdovers, not least among the DoJ attorneys, including the all important USA’s.

His inaugural address should have been a direct assault on the Reagan ideology that government is the problem not the solution. He should have said that we’ve now seen what happens when you take that to its extreme.His speech should have been about how politicians have too long been running on the question of how big or small government should be, when true leaders should be running it well.

The clear insight of the day.

Thank you.

There is quite the book in your future based on that quote Dr. Westen.

I assume your point was that FDR was not afraid of them because he was one of them, and that Clinton and Obama are afraid of them, want to please them, because they were manifestly not part of them growing up. The convert is always the most zealous.

Miriam already did what you suggest and voted for Nader instead of for Gore in 2000. As she says, that didn’t cause the Dems to move to the left. Any suggestions on how to do that?

That’s because Democrats are corporatist. They are not going to move to the left, period. And as I have said many times, progressives should primary Democrats using the Democrats’ own access to the ballot to get around many of the obstacles set up against third parties. I don’t understand too this argument that if progressives break with the Democrats they must have an up and running viable party ready tomorrow. It’s a process and now with populist anger in the country is a very good time to start working on it.

Agreed. That was my point, he should have cleared all the decks to include
Gates…

Agreed hell just primary out those in very safe districts. It’s doubtful they have the war chest to actually fend off such and attack and Washington doesnt give a flying flip about helping them it would in the very least either 1) give us real progressives or 2) wake up those already in DC that they are spineless laughing stocks.

Rethugs switch registrations to run as Dems all the time. In 08 we had a Rethug mayor run as a Dem to force a primary in the congressional race.

Bush was a disaster for this country and McCain would have been at least as bad. We have gotten Hilda Solis and a stronger EPA. That isn’t enough to make what is happening ok but at least it is something.

Some may want to join David Dayen’s fresh cross-post already in progress: “Best Way To Excite Progressives In 2010 – Mobilizing Against Harold Ford”

That is a fundamental question that gnaws at me: “Why is Obama so afraid of the FDR type of government that brought this country the greatest run in the history of democratically elected governments when the reason we are crumbling is because that very FDR foundation built on a prosperous middle class is crumbling”??

Because he is a Blue Dog corporatist. I mean seriously. You have this idea of Obama with this progressive inside him wanting to burst out. Piffle. He is nothing of the sort. He can lie and dish some rhetoric but the substance is Blue Dog corporatist. If we look at the last year through this prism his Presidency has been remarkably consistent and expectable.

That’s exactly what Robert Johnson said recently on The Real News Network.

A myth is a vision, an image, a metaphor that makes sense of the world and our role in it. As such, myths deliver nations into Waste Lands or Promised Lands, depending precisely on the intentions with which we load them.

DR. ROBERT JOHNSON: This is probably the place where I would personally be most critical of President Obama. President Obama inherited a mess. Anybody can take pain, as long as they think it is transient. President Obama is a tremendously persuasive man, and he’s got the rule book, from Franklin Roosevelt, about nothing to fear but fear itself. It is incumbent upon the President of the United States to articulate a vision of why this is a transient painful episode, and what we’re going to build to create that productivity and that broad-based middle class prosperity in the future. If he can do that, and people can believe that, I think we would have a much, much more how to say invigorated body politic and hopeful group of people, and this crisis will be much more bearable. Right now, there’s no putting that vision forward.

PAUL JAY: They were elected to do it.. . . .

So putting forth that vision is critical to healing the nation. What’s the role of “the vision thing” in your analysis of Obama, Dr. Westen? And no, I still haven’t slowed down long enough even to read your article. I did at least bring it up in another tab.

Word!

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Obama’s dismissal of the left is extremely condescending towards them.

And with McCain in office maybe the Democrats would have resisted cutting Medicare. With Solis at Labor has EFCA passed? With a stronger EPA, has climate change been seriously addressed?

I don’t know about that stronger EPA thing. It just approved more mountaintop removal in WVA. They keep it up WVA is gonna be as flat as FL.

We progressives must read and understand the ART OF WAR by SUN TZU

ALL WAR IS BASE ON DECEPTION.

Obama is a tool of the elites just like Reagan. The elites only care about maintaining the status quo.

To stop the wave of the PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT from taking over DC, the Elites tricked the Progressives into thinking OBAMA was one of them.

Ask yourself this simple question, what makes Obama different than Bush? He speaks better english? is that it.

Everyone wants to think like the Democratic Brand could not be stolen, well it was stolen by CLINTON.

This is not the Democratic Party of JFK and FDR.

I get tired of hearing people talking about how demoralized they are by Barrack Obama actions. Obama is not demoralized.

Progressives should be more pissed at Obama than they were at BUSH, at least BUSH told you he hated progressives.

The elites win, when you think like a victim, get mad and fight back progressives.

the big secret the elites do not want the masses to know, is that the names GOP party and Dem party mean nothing. they control the puppets that call themselves congress people.

the masses must do what the elites do, control the people you elect with the power you do have your vote. remember every 1st term president wants a second term.

(excellent example, make congress put the health care scam on c span, so we can see how they sell us out)

SUN TZU says it best

In times of peace prepare for war and in times of war prepare for peace.

(war never stops)

Yes that’s what I meant. Class is a deep psychological asset when you are dealing with the class you inherited, whether upper or lower.

Those “wins” are so minor that at best they are Pyrrhic and at worst they are illusory. Tougher EPA standards are great, but on the great climate and ecological question of the day, global warming, I doubt we are going to see enough action to stave off any future disaster. A Sec of Labor that enforces the law is also a great thing, but hardly a victory more a establishment of order and the executive being the executive branch.

Lilly Leadbetter is also a great change to the law, but I’m just not seeing how this gets butts in the seats and voters to the polls.

No this is worse.
By continuing the Bush policies, Obama has legitimized them in the eyes of a large number of liberals. They are no longer the rouge policies of a rouge president.

War never stops because the vast majority of us believe that’s the way the world was made to work by a male war god: to favor males in the “rightful” conquest of all things feminine, especially Mother Nature.

How many of us here believe life is an eternal war between “good” and “evil?” In his war-mongering Nobel speech, Obama explicitly said, “For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.” Oh really? Can I get me a pound of that?

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there’s nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

No, he doesn’t “face the world as it is,” he faces it as he believes it to be: a perpetual holy war. That’s some blatant myth-making.

I seem to recall that Washington was credited with (re)unifying a divided city council.

I also see some flaws in the idea that conflict avoidance lies behind Obama’s abandonment of his progressive promises. His use of Rahm Emanuel to bully and browbeat progressives, both in and out of government, seem to indicate that he is quite comfortable with conflict with the left.

Possible explanations:
1) He sees the left as weak and easily marginalized, ie it’s not so much that he fears conflict, as that he only fears conflict with strong opponents.
2) He is not a progressive, and Hope and Change was simply a slick marketing campaign to get him elected. I find this idea plausible for several reasons:
(a) Obama used to be a protege of Lieberman and the DLC. He’s always been corporate-friendly, and his economic positions, in early 2008, were the among the least progressive of any of the Democratic primary contenders.
(b) The picks he made for his Chief of Staff and financial leadership (Summers, Geithner, et al) were all solidly anti-progressive, corporate Blue Dog types – the absolute antithesis of the change he promised. This was long before he had to deal with the conflict of governing. Is it surprising then, that the policies emerging are precisely those that have always been promoted by Conservadems like Emanuel, Geithner and Summers?

I think he showed us his true face then, and the pro-corporate policies emerging from Congress are precisely what he intended all along – preserving the privileges of the powerful and keeping those corporate dollars rolling into DNC coffers. I mean, lets get real – if he really wanted change, Rahm Emanuel is the last person he would have picked (except perhaps Lieberman). That should have told us all we needed to know about him, right there.

Of course, maybe we’re all being unfair. He does really represent a big change from the previous administration. Back then, the president abused the opposition party and pandered to his base; now we have a president who abuses his base and panders to the opposition. Can’t get any more different than that!

Thanks, Dr. Drew,

We have to do something to take money out of the equation, because you can’t have democracy and organized bribery of public officials, which the Supreme Court is surely about to redefine as “free speech.” I’d like to have that kind of speech the next time I get pulled over for speeding…

Three recommendations for your next pullover for speeding:

1) Make sure your congressional member license plate registration is current. Absolute power corrupts nearly everything it touches.

2) State your case to the officer clearly that you live by the old maxim, laws are made to be broken. As a member of congress, we make the laws, and it’s up to us to break them.

3) Always carry a pair of Redskins tickets from your favorite lobbyist, just in case a discreet bribe is necessary to supplement the last resort — I want the name of your supervisor, right now.

Eisenhower is a good example, but I have started to view him almost as a new Hoover.

Hoover didn’t cause the Great Depression. The 1929 crash happened right after he became president, which is close enough of an analog to 2008 crash happening just before Obama became president. The result is that both men found themselves in the Oval Office at a time that called for a radical new paradigm, but their entire history striving to get there occurred under the reign of the old paradigm, which they assumed would continue through their tenure.

And Hoover didn’t completely ignore the problem. He made some small efforts to pick up the economy, but he was too much of a slave to the old way of thinking to do more than tinker around the edges, with his first priority being a balanced budget and not interfering too much in the free market. And as a result of his aversion to taking big action or really changing the perception of the role of government, the economy continued to go down while the people started to get angry.

Today, I see a president who tinkers around the edges of problems, averse to those big actions and conflicts, with a growing populist backlash to his left and right.

I have given up hope that he will be our FDR. My new hope is that our new FDR will come soon, and hopefully not after having a politically reactionary election that puts another extreme right-wing administration in power.

Although I suppose for Obama’s sake that might be a benefit, in the sense that it might shift him from a Herbert Hoover to a Calvin Coolidge… in other words, a presidency that probably added to the problems but was ultimately forgettable.

Psyche, Science, and Society » 2009 » December » 15Dec 15, 2009 … Because where FDR told progressives “Make me do it,” on health insurance reform, … That was not going to happen, the administration said, …
psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2009/12/15/ – Cached

Yeah – I don’t get that whole “deer in the headlights” or someone who is fearful of conflict. I think he’s just a fairly conservative guy innately who basically ran the primary campaign he needed to run in order to win.

Isn’t Reagan one of his idols, for crying out loud?

You are correct.

However,what is not a myth is the idea that Big Oil, Big Insurance, the Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street, etc. are going to roll over and let progressives change the status quo.

the 1960′s terrified the elites in the USA.

thus the military and large corporations brought up the mainstream media.

if you control what people think, you will control what they do.

you can call it a football game, war, whatever, at the end of the day Obama and the elites tricked the progressive movement in 2008.

if we were keeping score I would score it STATUS QUO 100 points Progressives 0 points.

campaign finance reform… which I believe is the only solution to the elite ruling class electing our “representatives” to do their will…

But how much can you see that happening?

I used to be an optimist, but frankly, we are screwed.

If Obama who campaigned stridently on protecting US from corporations sold us out from fucking day one…

there really is no more hope to be passed around.

The elite control the media, thereby controlling the minds of the mass of Americans under the bell curve, and they (the elite) control “our” representatives… checkmate.

I don’t see much way of breaking out of that short of civil war… and I don’t thinK Americans have it in them anymore.

hey jedi (184)… great minds think alike, heh? ;>)

Too bad we both see the same dismal picture.

Perhaps an island in the South Pacific?

I always thought the inauguration night expression on his face was strangely sad. I wonder if he had to make a deal with the clintonistas or something?

Distinguishing 1932 – 37 from 2004 – 09

When FDR took office in 1933, the country was in the third year of the Great Depression. The predominant foreign policy threat was Soviet Communism, whose ideals had much currency among America’s dispossessed millions. In fact during these years, many thought the rise of Nazi Germany would be a useful foil against the Red Menace from the East.

FDR swung “left” to govern for the wider public good as much to pre-empt the rise of domestic communism as to help the little people of this country. And for taking this stand, he was branded a traitor to his class.

It’s a medal that he wore proudly while doing what was needed to regulate the financial economy and to rebuild the regular economy.

Empty rhetoric aside, I see no evidence that Obama is committed to FDR’s approach.

Nice summary. Exactly right.

Conflict avoidance leads to appeasement, a good way to describe Obama’s behavior toward insuresters, drug companies, Wall Street, Joe Lieberputz, Republicans in general and advocates for more war in general.

It has to be combined with his assessment that the right matters and the left doesn’t, hence, its interests are not legitimate and need not be appeased. Meeting them would not meet his primary need to avoid conflict; rather, it would exacerbate the risks of high conflict.

That in turn suggests Mr. Obama is either a ConservaDem or closet Republican, but skillfully ran on a program of change because that was rationally the most likely option that would lead to his victory as an inexperienced, but charismatic, black male politician.

It really is multi-dimensional chess for him, but not in the way his now only sometimes populist rhetoric suggests. He can be as detached from his own rhetoric as much as anything else, one attribute of his intellect, if saying one thing and doing another meets his needs. He is, after all, a politician, and a Chicago one at that.

Thanks, jedi, agreed. For a myth to function, it has to have a minimum of truthiness. People have to “believe in” it, have to “get on board” with it, have to “buy in” to it, etc.

That TPTB would roll over in the face of organized progressives doesn’t make the cut, in my world. That delusion should’ve been dispelled, as another commenter said earlier, with the appointment of Geithner, Summers, Gates, Brennan, and on and on.

Hugh said it best: Obama is a corporatist Blue Dog who fooled enough of us long enough to win. He’s never been genuinely progressive, his schtick is to jack us with myths into which we’re only too eager to jump. I’m betting it’s derived from Campbell’s decades of lectures at FSI, and is now our SOP for jacking electorates.

You are so right. What in the hell is he committed too? I told my husband that he feels Republican to me, and that he just used us to get into the Oval Office, knowing full well the right would never run or elect him. But then I believe that they are also keeping aliens at Roswell.

Of course, those were the days when confronting Russia was more than calling the media to take pictures of you sitting on your porch, shaking your fist at the low hills across the Bering Strait.

I suspect Obama feels he’s between all classes and all other traits, for that matter.

He has his intellect, his physical looks and strength, and his ability to appease the strongest force in the room, and the charisma to make it seem natural to anyone who might think that not a good, statesmanlike or responsible thing to do. He would have become self-aware of those traits and that they worked in meeting his needs, quite early in life. He would have an enormous ability to tolerate multiple inconsistent thoughts at once and to rationalize away the conflicts among them.

Word! Love your emphasis on the choice of campaign styles as one of marketing, not principles, by a pol, and a Chicago one at that. Brilliant!

If you didn’t catch the link in my previous post, this is what Obama and other federal officials, regardless of party, are committed to:

http://www.ianwelsh.net/why-democrats-are-doing-electorally-stupid-things/

I think we were not so afraid of Russia or the Russians as we were of the idea that the populace could again take down a government and its ruling class in the vain hope of supplanting it with something better. Like most foreign policy choices, the reaction to the Red Menace was dependent on domestic politics more than an assessment of a foreign threat or risk. Smedley Butler and the aborted Wall Street coup to overturn Roosevelt come to mind. Wall Street has improved its strategy. Now it just buys what it wants.

I think Obama proves Nader was right about them being teedle dee and teedle dumb. I don’t see things as better under Obama than Bush and don’t think they will get worse under Sarah. Sarah was picked by Bill Kristol too, just like Bush. Gore selections of Lieberman as vp and Hillary vote for the war, show the democrats would have fought Iraq too. The only thing I disagree with Drew about is that I think we need to threaten Obama with third party challenges and not just primaries. In other words if primaries fail to replace him go for a third party, and if it spoils him, we have established that the left will let dems lose twice. If the problem is the left has no place to go, the green party solves this problem.

I agree with your assessment, and I also grow weary of this very tired psychobabble excuse.

He has had no problems with conflict when he is doing the work of his corporate overlords.

Lets stop pretending Obama isnt doing exactly what he intended to do all along.

In restrospect, its pretty clear the slogan of “Change you can believe in” didnt reffer to actual changes, but just in his ability to dupe us into believing his lies about change. Those promises of change where disengenuous from the start. That should be pretty obvious by now.

U.S. government as a captive subsidiary of Wall Street has every reason to fear a populist uprising. I don’t see that happening from the center or the left. The teabagger birther beckists will lead that charge.

And so the internal choice will be the same that America and Germany faced in 1932.

You mean — Change we can make believe in.

That’s the irony of modern political marketing.

Candidates can’t get elected by telling the truth or keeping their promises to reform the system.

Those who control access to the levers of power won’t permit it.

Obama also works hard to avoid conflict with the right and the PTB, but not the left, hence, Dr. Westen’s take on what drives his decision-making.

This post was devoted to Dr. Westen, one of America’s foremost psychologists. If you want to avoid the theorizing, this is may not be the post I would choose.

And so the internal choice will be the same that America and Germany faced in 1932 … not the internal choice America and Russia faced in 1917.

If I feel like posting a response in this thread to someone, I will. What makes you think you are in a position to tell people who should be here and who shouldnt?

Good question. I probably wouldn’t have the TV on, myself.

Many thanks for asking me to join you.

Glad you are back. We like to talk – had a thread once that lasted 24 hours !

Do you see any signs that Obama might be beginning to get the whole picture or is it just hopeless?

Dr. Westen, I just quoted you extensively on Jane Hamsher’s thread upstairs and Twain told me you returned! Thank you for writing such an excellent article and for coming back to discuss it further.

There may be a potentially fatal flaw in the Obama-Emanuel ‘use them and lose them’ strategy. It is this: If enough voters feel they haven’t delivered on their campaign promises or they feel they’ve been used, it will be a One-and-Done administration and the Democrats may be mortally wounded in the upcoming elections. Nothing negatively motivates people more than having their dreams and expectations dashed. You may fool them once, but voters have to see some positives in their day-to-day lives. Like more jobs, access to credit, foreclosure relief, to name a few. If all they see is Wall Street coming out ahead, the insurers and pharma controlling health care reform, no real financial reform, they’ll realize that all the campaign talk was a ploy to get elected. No one likes being used and they resent it when they realize they’ve been had.
Maybe there aren’t enough people seeing what’s unfolding in this administration that they’ll be foolish enough to get suckered again and give it a second term. But being the realist and cynic I am, I know that there will be.

Obama should never have gotten people’s expectations so high. He would have been better off to talk about what the situation really was, and stressed the mess that Bush had left for him to clean up. People would have understood and their expectations would have been more reasonable. He would probably still have done the things he is doing now but his base might not have turned on him like rabid dogs – including me.

Did Dr. Westen leave again?

Heh.

You and I know you are a realist…

But there are plenty of people who would call you a dreamer for expecting too much.

My point is, Obama and his campaign deliberately played it out that way, hyping expectations. And all the while having no intention of being truly progressive. Things are working out virtually as planned. Rahm was brought in as Chief of Staff, Geitner and the Goldman Sachs pipeline was put in place, Wall Street coddled, the insurers and pharma virtually writing the ‘reform’ bill, the pharma deal, drug re-importation killed, etc. This isn’t a case of a wide-eyed neophyte being conned by the slick DC insiders. This was the plan all along. He knew exactly what was going on and what he was doing. The problem is, too many people bought the sales pitch and didn’t really examine the product. Now buyer’s remorse is setting in and it’s too late to do anything about it.

exibit A : “…likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process.”

exibit B : “…because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center.”

RE: exibit A; VOTE, please everyone show up and VOTE your best option. The “lesser of two evils” options is the main reason we are in the mess we are in now. For the sake of everything the United States is supposed to be about SHOW UP AND VOTE, even if to write in mickey mouse or whatever!

RE: exibit B; Jane and FDL have done superlative work, Rham is a crook, it ain’t cool, Rep. Dennis K. has an opportunity to shine with the F&F Hearings, there is no doubt that the Health Care Reform effort went bad. It’s time to get T.R. with the bastids. VOTE the BUMS OUT.

Good Work FDL.

Our Mantra should be : SHOW UP AND VOTE no matter what!

OM Effing G! Why didn’t someone tell me John Oliver damn near quoted me on TDS last night? His time-travel segment is prefuckingcisely what I’m on about (esp. starting at 4:49 video, 8:05 full episode). Yeah sure, could be a coincidence, could be because I’ve been commenting on his thread of the TDS forum in exactly these terms.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-5-2010/even-better-than-the-real-thing

JOHN OLIVER: OK, so just when was the simpler, better time that all these great Americans want us to return to?

Hello! What’s the primary effect of the shock in Klein’s epochal Shock Doctrine? Infantilization! They’re trying to mind-fuck us into infants, and when we regress, to imprint themselves on our psyches in the “angry father” iconic image, the better to jack us to hell and stick us with the bill in every fucking way.

This unbefuckinglieveable quote is at 5:32-36 (video; c. 8:45 full episode):

“Glenn Beck has mythologized his childhood so much, he’s completely lost touch with reality.” [Italic emphasis original.]

What ails us today? Is it the position or stature of our modern moai? HA!

It’s the mythology! The Power of Myth is powering weapons-grade domestic propaganda. That’s the power source of Klein’s Shock Doctrine. (See also the previous month’s segment, From Think Tanks to Battle Tanks.)

To gnomedigest@204, in a reply to Hugh@54, you posted this @199:

I also grow weary of this very tired psychobabble excuse.

I then wrote this @204:

This post was devoted to Dr. Westen, one of America’s foremost psychologists. If you want to avoid the theorizing, this is may not be the post I would choose.

I did not say that you ought not to post here or anywhere else. I suggested that on this post you would not find many who would miss a chance to theorize about the psychology of this president’s decision-making with one of America’s great political psychologist, or call his or responsive comments a “tired psychobabble excuse”.

Totally spectacular discussion!

Thank you Dr. Westen and everyone who participated.

The ideas on our collective mythmaking are very interesting: done gots me thinking.

Dr. Westen: I am a personal injury lawyer who has tried cases for over thirty years. I know about lawyers who are risk averse and conflict averse. John Edwards, a very successful trial lawyer, was not one who was conflict averse.

But Obama and both Clintons seem to be averse to conflict and it is probably because they never were trial lawyers. You can learn to be a trial lawyer and you can learn to accept that conflicts are necessary and learn how to engage in them. It is a nasty business but the art of creating conflict can be acquired even if it is not in your nature or against your upbringing. Unlike John Edwards, Obama simply never learned how, which happens to most lawyers who do not litigate.

When Obama made the comment in his campaign that he would sit down and try to work out something with the insurance industry, I knew he had no idea about what it takes to take on this industry. I had this sinking feeling he would be a push-over. Seems like my instincts were right. Experienced trial lawyers are pretty good at judging the skills of other lawyers.

I am a psychologist of thirty-five years experience, with a pretty decent track record in writing and publication. I think Dr. Westen’s appraisal of President Obama as being conflict averse is just flat wrong. His history is as a community organizer; that means building coalitions and consensus. Was he naive in believing he could reach-out to the right? Sure. Will he learn from getting bitten? Well, that remains to be seen.

That said, I believe Dr. Westen is absolutely on track as to the need of democrats learning to link their arguments to emotional responses. Does not mean giving up reason; it simply means linking reason to the appropriate emotional underpinning. It also means the reverse, though more difficult; taking the emotional response, working it backward in a manner that unlinks it from the presupposition.

Aardvark: You are correct that Obama was a community organizer, and as such, it means he was someone who built coalitions and consensus. But conflict usually means the opposite. You don’t usually build coalitions and consensus with one’s enemy or opponent. You try to win or beat them at the game, including the game of life or politics.

I just don’t see Obama as a fighter or a champion of the people. I see him as a compromiser, but a compromiser who avoids the unpleasantness of doing the dirty work necessary to get in a negotiating position of strength, or perhaps, more charitably, as one who doesn’t know how to get in that position.

Unlike FDR, who is claimed to have delighted in making his political enemies uncomfortable and who relished their hatred, Obama does not seem willing to make his political enemies uncomfortable, nor does he seem to relish their hatred.