Obama's Legacy: Of Opportunities Squandered

[Eartha-ly Delights]

I've been thinking lately, about what will be the "Legacy" of Barack Obama. That's a term Americans use often to describe the lasting effects their society experiences from each Presidency. What essential element of his own philosophy and his own vision he manages to pass on to the American people, to carry forward in his memory.. It's not a bad concept that.  A  leader ought to have some lasting impact upon a nation. For what was so special about one who came and went and left no lasting imprint upon his people?

Disappointment would be my first guess, as to what Legacy Obama leaves behind him. Disappointment and shattered illusions. And that's at best.
At worst, a cynical self interested sell out of the values he espoused when in the political woods. And fine values they were too. His rhetoric was impressive, As is his personage. A handsome, regal looking man. Classy. Always with his bright, attractive wife beside him. Beautiful kids. Not a First Family you're ashamed to send overseas, I'm sure. One has to admit that  he has in many ways raised America's international standing up from the abysmal levels it had reached under Bush/Cheney.  Some national pride has been restored. I suppose that's something. Though since it's all been hype and PR, rather than any discernible change in the Imperialistic impetus of the mighty US Military Industrial Machine, I doubt that effect will last long.

But in the litmus test of what he has actually achieved for the people who elected him? Well he agreed to waste hundreds of billions on a useless Bailout of inefficient and corrupt Financial Institutions and then acquiesced to massive public sector, educational, welfare and Urban Aid program spending cuts to pay for that. The Boardroom boys all kept their Lear Jets and holiday homes in the Caribbean. Their numbered bank accounts in Switzerland.. But a hell of a lot of kids lost their Breakfast Programs and homework help centres. 

He promised to get the troops out of Iraq...and has done so to a great extent. But he did neglect to mention during the campaign that there would be a decade long layover in Afghanistan on the way home. Thousands are still dying there on both sides. No great change there then. A lot of those soldiers who voted for him in the belief that he would swiftly bring them home are still coming home today. In body bags and wheel chairs..

And on the domestic front?  The economy?  Millions are still homeless. Millions more are unemployed. Many of those people are about to run out of welfare entitlements and as winter approaches later in the year there is a real risk of mass deaths from hunger and exposure among their number. . Had the money for that Bailout been more courageously dispersed...say in the form of low interest loans for defaulting home owners and small business people, that may have been largely averted.. 

Many of these newly destitute citizens had committed no economic faux pas of their own.. They had merely been caught up in the incompetence, the larceny and finally the bankruptcies of the Wall Street fraternity, Many of them lost what were once thriving businesses, and stable homes for the want of a financial backer.,Even those who did not lose their homes saw the value of them plummet. The family home. The major investment for most ordinary working people.. Worth less than they had paid for it 20 years earlier. Carpet baggers bought up  property deeds by the hundred weight. Warren Buffet, prime among them. 

Possibly the US economy would not be slipping back into almost Third World status right now if more imaginative and radical approaches had been taken with that money while he had the chance. While he was riding the groundswell of that impressive victory. When he had the mandate. And the people stood behind him, willing him on. But he hadn't the wherewithal or the will to back the very people who had lifted him to such dizzying heights of power and possibility.. The Middle Classes. And so they are fated to watch themselves being wiped out. Just as three decades ago, Reaganomics wiped out the American aspirational working classes, leaving them to wallow in a mire of minimum wage service jobs, welfare and generational poverty. 
Will this then will be his "Legacy" ? The destruction of the very strata of society which hefted him so high above the  madding crowd. The American Middle Class is in extremis. They were at deaths door anyway under Bush. I guess Obama  just got up and pulled them through.
First it was the small business people and the Tradesmen. Then the retail sector. The Hospitality and Services Industries. All of them strangled by the shock of finding that the general public suddenly had a lot less cash with which to indulge themselves in home renovations and nights at a nice restaurant. The first casualties of an economic war of attrition. The collateral damage of commerce gone mad.

And they are about to have a lot more company in their ranks, as the clerical workers and teachers, the public servants and the self employed find themselves thrown on the midden of economic "realities"..Of "downsizing" and "restructuring" Of Budget Cuts and Austerity programs.

Obama promised those people hope and fellowship. He held himself up as their Champion. Ultimately  he delivered precious little.  It was a philosophical call to arms he issued them. Let's stand together and make it different this time.
And they answered that call in their droves. All they had waited for was a leader with some vision and they were right there. Really unafraid .Ready to change their world. 

It was honestly quite something to watch. As a foreigner. To know that in my own country such a courageous choice would never have been made.. That someone who spoke of ideals and principles, of freedom and enlightenment . Of national responsibility and redressing of wrongs would never have been preselected, let alone elected. For a minute there it almost looked like it might be alright. That the courage the electorate had shown would be rewarded. The promises made to them honoured. Between November 2008 and January 2009 they languished there on that battlefield they had won so gloriously.. And they held their Standards high, in anticipation of the great "change" they had laboured so long and hard to bring to birthing.

Of course, because he is just another Politician  he left them there, exposed and undefended, as he beat a hasty retreat to the Boardrooms. To take refuge with the Bankers, in their luxurious bunkers. A lackey of the status quo. The shiny new bastion of the dominant paradigm. Leaving that army he had raised to be crushed by the derailment of an entire economy that as it turns out, no one ever really understood in the first place. Least of all the Bankers and the Politicians.
You go ask anyone on Wall Street or in congress to explain to you how a Credit Default Swap works. They can't. They don't know how the feckers work any more than the cab driver who brings them to their plush offices does. And the world's economy fell through a bloody great hole in the boardroom floor because of that.

And the rub is, the very morons whose hubris and greed caused it all are the only ones never asked to lower their standard of living in order to remedy it. After all his talk of "accountability" and "a change from the old guard".He did what they would all do. He sheltered the tip, to the great cost of the base.

Shame about Obama really. All that fancy advertising, .but when push came to shove, he had no goods in the store at all.

It is an old Political truism that a nation gets the government it deserves.
But you know, I think the American people deserved better than they got there.

[Doktor Howl]

Balls.

The American people haven't had half the kicking around they deserve.  Elect ME.

I will fix this shit.  Oh, yes.

[Eartha-ly Delights]

Howl as Benevolent Dictator?
I'm down with that.

But only if you promise to stage a hostile take over of Aus as well.
We could do with some fucking leadership in this shithole, let me tell you.Governance by opinion poll is starting to lower the common denominator to undreamed of depths.

[Juana]

Benevolent?

[Doktor Howl]

Howl as Benevolent Dictator?
I'm down with that.

But only if you promise to stage a hostile take over of Aus as well.
We could do with some fucking leadership in this shithole, let me tell you.Governance by opinion poll is starting to lower the common denominator to undreamed of depths.

Only without the benevolent part.  I will give the American people exactly what they have demanded.

[Eartha-ly Delights]

oooh well if it's proper Discipline you're aiming for then call in BadBeast for advice. You know the English are always mad for a good caning.


(I tell you it's the boarding schools. They have a lot to answer for.)

[BabylonHoruv]

One minor quibble.

Obama never even implied he was getting out of Afghanistan during his campaign. He made it very clear during the debates that he intended to ramp up the forces there.

[BadBeast]

And I never went to fucking boarding school! 

[Cain]

Obama didn't squander any opportunities.

He empowered the executive.  He enriched his backers.  He sold his enemies the rope on which they hanged themselves.  He smashed the left of his own party.  He has shown Congress is weak and not worth listening to.  He made a show of coming down hard on Wall Street while secretly catering to them.  He has declared all out war on whistleblowers and those who expose the crimes of the American government, with barely a whimper from civil libertarians.

I mean, it's not like anyone is arguing George W. Bush squandered the opportunity to not invade Iraq, is it?  They only count as squandered if Obama's objectives match your own.  Which they don't.  So, yeah.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Obama didn't squander any opportunities.

He empowered the executive.  He enriched his backers.  He sold his enemies the rope on which they hanged themselves.  He smashed the left of his own party.  He has shown Congress is weak and not worth listening to.  He made a show of coming down hard on Wall Street while secretly catering to them.  He has declared all out war on whistleblowers and those who expose the crimes of the American government, with barely a whimper from civil libertarians.

I mean, it's not like anyone is arguing George W. Bush squandered the opportunity to not invade Iraq, is it?  They only count as squandered if Obama's objectives match your own.  Which they don't.  So, yeah.

This, exactly.

[Triple Zero]

Obama didn't squander any opportunities.

He empowered the executive.  He enriched his backers.  He sold his enemies the rope on which they hanged themselves.  He smashed the left of his own party.  He has shown Congress is weak and not worth listening to.  He made a show of coming down hard on Wall Street while secretly catering to them.  He has declared all out war on whistleblowers and those who expose the crimes of the American government, with barely a whimper from civil libertarians.

I mean, it's not like anyone is arguing George W. Bush squandered the opportunity to not invade Iraq, is it?  They only count as squandered if Obama's objectives match your own.  Which they don't.  So, yeah.

How do you know those were his objectives and he's not just being played?

Not saying it's one or the other, just wondering how you got the conclusion of what his objectives must be.

[Cain]

His actual policy statements reflect many of these sentiments, as do his choices for his cabinet.

The problem with the idea of him "being played" is that you have to decide who is playing him.  Rahm Emanuel, scourge of progressives?   He's now the Mayor of Chicago.  Joe Biden?  Biden has actually argued against Obama on some fairly important issues, including the Afghan War (he wants to use the "counter-terrorist" model, but has been overruled).  Hillary Clinton?  She's too busy fighting Samantha Power for de facto control of the State Department.  Gates has been nothing but loyal, whomever is in the White House.

Like with Bush, candidates for the man behind the curtain are slim.  You could argue for him being manipuated endlessly by every faction, but that strikes me as even more implausible.  In some cases, there are probably elements of coercion (Goldman Sachs and their gun to the head of the US economy spring to mind), but at the end of the day, he is the President.  He picks the Cabinet, he sets the agenda, he has the veto power.  Congress can't even get their act together when it comes to stopping funding for the Libya intervention, all they know how to do properly is name Post Offices during the day and, when the cameras switch off at night, shovel huge amounts of pork towards their political backers.  So they're definitely not in charge.  He also has roughly $1 billion in the bank for his re-election campaign and no obvious contenders from the left or right (even the PUMAs have shut up now, and the GOP field is a joke), so there is very little to threaten him with.