The White House is simmering with anger at criticism from liberals who say President Obama is more concerned with deal-making than ideological purity. During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough…. “I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”…. The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”
Congratulation, y’all; it didn’t even take the Obama Administration two years to forget how and why the won they White House in 2008. To say that the Left (yes, including your humble author) is frustrated that “Change you can believe” in has proven to be so many empty words would be something of an understatement. Now we have to deal with the reality that we’re being taken for granted.
To be fair, I should begin by recognizing that President Barack Obama’s record of accomplishments since he took office IS impressive…but it’s a “good news/bad news” scenario. Obama’s leadership arguably kept the economy from sliding from deep recession into flat-out depression. No, we’re not out of the woods…but things could have been much worse. We also have a financial reform bill…though the jury’s still out on how effective the reforms contained in the bill will actually be.
On the “bad news” side of the coin, we still don’t have a climate change bill, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is still with us, and Gays and Lesbians are still legally second-class citizens. Of course, no reasonable person expected the world to change in less than two years- especially given the clusterf—k bequeathed to President Obama by The Worst President EVER ©. Free passes aside, would it be too much to expect to see progress towards resolving these and other issues we were promised would be fixed? I don’t think so…and neither do many more on the Left.
What we’ve seen is an Administration far too willing to kowtow to the demands and threats of the Far Right. It’s as if President Obama is afraid of angering the Fox Noise Channel crowd. What we’ve been left with is a string of watered-down half-measures that do nothing but create the impression that Mitch McConnell has the President’s cojones in a jar at his desk. And then for Robert Gibbs to call out the “Professional Left” for holding the Administration accountable for falling short of the promises made during the 2008 campaign? I may not be a member of the “Professional Left” (the “Amateur Left”, perhaps), so I’m not bound by the decorum that’s normally expected of professional journalists. Therefore, y’all will kindly keep your powder dry when I tell Robert Gibbs to go fornicate himself (and I like the guy).
Promises were made during the campaign. I understand that keeping some of those promises will take time. What I’m upset about are the promises that have clearly been broken (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell), the obvious half-measures (financial reform), and the promises that seem to have been abandoned (global climate change). There’s nothing unreasonable about expecting that promises made eventually morph into promises kept. Yes, Barack Obama is STILL a damn sight better than the unmitigated disaster a President John McCain would have been. That doesn’t mean, though, that those of us on the Left should genuflect in Obama’s general direction at the mere mention of his name.
“Change You Can Believe In?” Eh, I’m not so certain. When you’re comfortable with compromises, half-measures, and pleasing those who wish nothing more than to see you fail, how can you create anything resembling change? I’m frustrated, certainly, but I’m not willing to give up. There is one thing of which I’m absolutely certain, though:
WE DESERVE BETTER.
