For all the good done by President Obama, all his qualities in eloquently stating our values and more, his administration from early on looked like one of missed opportunities.
William Rivers Pitt in truthout examines the pros and cons in specifics. In a few paragraphs below, we spout off in general.
President Obama did not want to appear partisan -- and this reflex dogged him til the end when he hesitated to appoint a Supreme Court justice or federal judges while Congress was on an official break, and when he balked at busting Putin pre-election for espionage.
In a can't-win but nothing-to-lose political context, that was a curious and ironic reflex.
The partisanship was inflicted on him and the country by Republicans whose agenda was to get re-elected, to hell with the country and its people, and to break the government. Just bust it all to pieces. Their mantra, seared like the sound of Marsha Blackburn's screeching fingernails-on-the-blackboard voice, was that government dos not work -- and, by God, they were going to fuck it up so much that they proved their point.
The Republican partisanship was imposed upon him -- it did not matter what Obama did or said, he could not win. He and his family were squeaky clean role models, so without a whiff of scandal or misconduct to bang upon -- not even a non-issue like where his emails came from -- Republicans simply made up shit, like he was a Muslim born in Kenya.
The Republicans made it "partisan" for Obama to get out of bed in the morning.
Therefore, the most extremely progressive thing that Obama could have done would not have moved the partisan context one iota. So, this reflex to pull back was a flawed one as it did not make him look good or Presidential or accommodating or whatever. It made him look weak.
Early in his administration, conventional wisdom expressed by many observers was, He can't come off like an angry black man! And he was always cool and tempered, so got that, no angry black man. Except, maybe he should have given them what they feared. Maybe he should have gone all angry black man on their ass! Certainly he could not have been criticized any more by his enemies.
Shame on too many Americans for believing the bullshit and being so ignorant and/or racist as to go along with it; shame on the progressives for not pushing Obama more, for laying back and appearing unchallenging, or over-expecting the President alone to do the heavy lifting -- because, gee, the President has so much heaped on him by Republicans, let's not pile on or give Republicans something else to twist into a complaint.
Whenever he complained about Republican obstructionists in Congress, he rarely called out the true culprits, instead just blaming "Congress" as a whole.
Everyone knew Obama was a corporatist, like Bill Clinton and Hillary and the Bushes. Somewhat Republican light. (Look up the Republicans 1956 platform if you want to see how far Republicans have fallen.) The currently popular term for this is neoliberalism.
So, in fairness, we did not temper our expectations when Obama got elected. I recall a comment from a black preacher being interviewed just far enough into his administration to see how things were going: "He was black, so we figured he would know what to do."
There is enough blame to go around.
They say that few people on their death bed regret things they did -- there is more regret about things not done, opportunities squandered. Humans pile up regret over missed opportunities during the course of a lifetime, and there is a self-blaming or even sell-loathing over that. Perhaps we hoped Obama was not only more politically skillful than us but stronger in character, less suspect to mortal human weaknesses, such as wasting opportunities like we had done. Perhaps Obama could compensate for our shortcomings, and we could vicariously just feel better. That's a lot to put off on one person, even a President.
Those squandered opportunities are magnified when we look ahead to President Obama's successor -- who makes Obama look like a saint and whose agenda clearly is to plunder and pilfer for his own financial gain, even if it means hopping in bed with a criminal and dictator whose interests are overtly anti-American.
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