There is a limited range of options here at Falling Downs on a rainy day. Clean up bat shit in the attic. Sharpen the chainsaws. Even better, make a plan for cleaning up the bat shit, sharpening the chainsaws... Every once in awhile you need a break from all that planning. Thank God for the world wide web.
Moises Naim coined the "Bushification" phrase in an essay that was published the week of Obama's inauguration. Like many a pundit, Naim had the audacity to hope that the election of The First Black President heralded a sea-change in the tone and direction of American foreign policy. That view of course betrays a profound dissatisfaction with the tone and direction under George W.
George W. was a great President, and here's why. As President, George didn't harbor any illusions about being a great statesman. He was content to just play the role. He read his script off the teleprompter with all the doltish enthusiasm he could muster, and that was good enough for him. When it came out that the Commander in Chief had perhaps shirked his military service in his youth, I thought, well good for him. As a matter of principle, I applaud everyone, rich or poor, who shirks their military service. Face it; if more people worldwide just said no thank-you to their military, there would be less war in the world.
Obama was, as they say, a different color of cat. TFBP had the audacity to hope that he was going to make a difference. And he talked a big game, didn't he? That infamous Cairo talk about "new beginnings" must have had Beltway think tankers nose-spraying coffee all over their Canali shirts. Say what? Mutual respect? Mutual trust? Not so fast my little brown friend!
George, on the other hand, wasn't much of a boat-rocker. It was all steady as she goes. He just reads the stuff and goes and plays a round of golf or cuts some brush down in Crawford. I respect a President who knows the difference between a Poulan and a Stihl. I've heard it rumored that George drives himself to the TSC in town and buys his own bar oil.
So TFBP needed an attitude adjustment, and it wasn't long in coming. Health care reform. TFBP had the audacity to imagine that he was going to bring reason and common sense to bear on the world's most expensive and inefficient health care system. He learned his first big lesson on who calls the shots in the world's greatest democracy, and it ain't the President. By the time Obama's reforms became law he had succeeded in further entrenching the very forces that make the system dysfunctional in the first place. Far from being supplanted by some communistic single-payer system, the health care corporations got a law that required everyone to buy their products, and a law that required the government to subsidize the cost for anyone who couldn't afford it.
Corporations 1 ; TFBP 0
Well, since then the corporations and the super-rich have pretty much had a free run in Washington. And Nain's fear that foreign propagandists would need to tar TFBP with the Bush brush proved unfounded. Obama has pretty much lost the respect and admiration of the world that was so in love with him that first year. Daily drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan have taken care of that "new beginning". No help required from foreign propagandists.
Last night in Iowa Obama mumbled something about the realities of governing when asked where all the audacity and hope had gone. As the election cycle revs up, I think we'll be getting to know a less audacious President, one who sticks to the script he reads off the teleprompter. One who doesn't muddy the waters with reckless talk about hope.
Obama has figured out who runs America.
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