Loose Change

So Barack Obama isn’t the progressive that liberals championed for.  Get over it.  It's painful, I know.  I got swept up in Obamarama too.  But do you know what Barack Obama was?  He was the winner.  He was the one that defeated the Republican army who dismantled and rigged America for eight years.  He flipped race on its head.   He inspired a whole new legion of young democrats for generations to come. 

He came to Washington with an audacious agenda and a wave of support.  Washington met him with massive deficits and a Republican party that is unanimously opposed to everything.   Being the conciliatory character that he is, Obama reached across the aisle for bipartisanships sake and ended up bargaining away and watering down much of the policy that his base had envisioned to become change.  During the campaign we progressives drummed up this FDR like narrative for Obama when really a more accurate depiction would be that he is the consummate centrist.  I believe that it is not in Obama's character to pass fully effective progressive policy like the public option because it has never been in his plans to change the big industry paradigm in health, wall street, and energy.  Rather, Obama has always believed in his ability to ingratiate himself with the interests and bring them into his pragmatic yet not forward enough vision of compromise.  His policies and actions taken to pass them certainly reflect this.


President Obama passed an economic stimulus (half the size it should have been but all in all, saved us from a depression).  He huddled with the AMA, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance firms to make sure they were on board for the weak health care reform (without the public option,*shreik*).  Next was Wall Street reform where Obama's idea was to surround himself with Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and Ben Bernanke who are all intimately involved with the financial crisis (no ulterior motives here!).  Here is a fascinating NYT Book Review about Obama's psyche and his conciliatory character.

Now it’s your turn environment.  The “Change We Can Believe In” campaign certainly captivated environmentalists.  Obama preached for investing in renewable energy and green technology for the future.  His other initiatives included a focus on public transportation and a moratorium on offshore drilling.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a big step forward in the green future as it was a large investment in alternative energy like solar and wind power.  That's all good and great.  Where it got sticky was with the moratorium on new offshore drilling.  Weeks before the oil spill in the gulf, he lifted the moratorium and proclaimed it was safe technology.  Well it wasn’t.    The administration acted swiftly with holding BP accountable for the mess.  Obama could have really used this tragedy as a catalyst for a climate bill but he really fumbled on the issue.  Not allowing media access to the clean up continued to stupefy environmentalists.  As far as I am concerned the greatest environmental tragedy in the gulf isn’t just the oil, it's the dispersant. Dispersant toxicity and hoax information.   The energy industry including BP were some of Obama’s biggest political donors making me particularly wary of the administrations environmental policy.  Obama crafted the sell-out healthcare bill with regular meetings with the AMA, large pharmaceutical companies, and the insurance companies.  Why would the climate bill or environmental policy be any different?

I do believe the climate bill is important to Obama and he is the only person in America that can get it passed.   Congress won’t pass such controversial, wide-ranging policy without it being Obama’s number one issue that he is campaigning for.  Unfortunately, I don’t see this bill being passed until after the 2012 elections and it will be bloodier than the health care fight that lasted a year.  I wish he didn’t punt on the climate bill this summer.  The oil spill and the environment were at their most salient.  Now that the oil stopped gushing and all the oil has been dispersed into smaller, more dangerous particles, Americans have moved on.  Any time I go on a critical diatribe on Obama the centrist, I try to cool down and remember that even though I’m not totally supportive of his policies, he is the right leader for America and it’s certainly not an easy job.   I guess I find myself forming a compromise.  Damn he's good.