All About Obama: A President Without an Ideology

A month before the 2008 presidential election, the cover of The American Prospect, which I edited at the time, depicted an empty Oval Office and the headline, “The President Doesn’t Matter (As Much As You Think).” Inside we ran articles about the institutions of Washington, such as the Senate Finance Committee—and its feckless chairman, Max Baucus—and the Federal Reserve, explaining the limits they would impose on the scope of change that might be possible under an Obama administration.

The issue fell flat on the newsstand, and the Prospect’s board of directors was apoplectic about the cover. Even if my colleagues and I were right, the publisher complained, the cover “wasn’t appropriate to the moment.”

We were right, as it turns out. But it’s also true that it wasn’t an appropriate moment to make that point, because no one wanted to hear it. Remember when all we could talk about was the possibility of a “transformational president”? In the thrill of what was, for many of us, the first decisive Democratic victory in our lifetimes, and what seemed to be—and probably is—a demographic shift in the electorate toward the younger, the nonwhite, and the socially tolerant, it was too easy to imagine that the 30-year conservative era dating from roughly halfway through the Carter administration had ended with a bang and that change on the scale of an FDR or a Reagan was possible.

In that moment, many liberals forgot an insight that they had painstakingly learned—or should have learned—in the Bush era: conservative dominance was not just a matter of electing a president, but of building, in the words of former Senator Bill Bradley, “a stable pyramid” of organizations focused on policy development, grass-roots mobilization, and media, “at the top of which you’ll find the president.” That president could be almost anyone—even, as if to prove the point, George W. Bush—because the ideological and organizational infrastructure is more important. Democrats, Bradley argued in a 2005 New York Times op-ed, “invert the pyramid,” vesting all hope in individual presidential candidates, who are expected to build their entire infrastructure from scratch. Three years later Obama did exactly that.


http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.4/mark_schmitt_all_about_barack_obama_books_review.php

Worthy of a read...

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He's been a resounding success at that!

...'property is theft' and 'expropriate the expropriators' is going to receive the unreserved blessing of DU anyways.

I suspect this is being un-rec'd for being an obvious exercise in trolling rather than for its actual content.

It is very similar to the Republican ideology.

www.thirdway.org

and it has all to do with organization and "hope and change"

You could elect an empty suit, we did with bush, well the USSC did... but the machine is such that you need a lot of support FROM THE BOTTOM, which the progressive movement has not built.

He squandered it. This President rode into office on a wave of progressive organization and enthusiasm that was unrivaled in recent elections.

The President's ideology matters, and this President definitely has an ideology. Once a President reaches the Oval Office, he has a responsibility to lead and teach and seize the moment to change the national conversation through the bully pulpit. This President has not only failed to do that, he has also been at the forefront of proposing his own supply-side and anti-progressive solutions to our economic problems. Democrats lost seats in the midterm elections because of widespread disillusionment about this President's willingness to focus on what the people NEEDED him to focus on first: jobs and their ability to feed their families.

This article is very mealy-mouthed and vague in complaining about what type of organization Obama's followers supposedly failed to create. Talk to the many, many DU-ers who worked their asses off to get him elected. The failure, actually betrayal, has come clearly from the top, not the bottom.

They're on a crusade to ruin this country.

we truly lack

We also need to quit "quitting" every time things don't pan out for them. When the right loses, they just double down and keep working, keep calling, keep organizing and, most importantly keep voting and even if it takes weeks, month, and/or years, they never give up. We need to follow that same example IMHO if we ever want to build the kind of progressive movement in this country that everybody talks about. We can't expect one man in one office beset by rabid adversaries (with a huge media platform and legions of lemmings) to fix everything or accomplish everything by power of will alone IMHO.

"Never give up, never surrender" (Galaxy Quest)

a parallel organization and RUN THEM as democrats in PRIMARIES.

And, a winning demeanor (however meaningless).

didn't read it. More later.

Which, really, is all that's left to them, at this point.

I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that Nader and DK will never be president.

n/t

we seem too Obama focussed here. Back in 2010, you'd think that Obama was running in that election. We need to win elections at the State legislator and school board level and also in Congress as much as we need a progressive in the oval office.

But it's also pretty clear that a good person in the oval office could accomplish a lot, instead of seeming to be on the other side.

And it's not compatible with Democratic Party principles nor the good of the nation.

Which was obvious to me in May of 2008 when he voted to wiretap us all.

the office does nothing due to the structures around him. I agree with you as to his neo liberal bent... but we do lack the structure from the bottom up.

It should need a companion article on third way thinking.

"it was too easy to imagine that the 30-year conservative era dating from roughly halfway through the Carter administration had ended with a bang and that change on the scale of an FDR or a Reagan was possible"

Making that happen and keeping it going took some work. Republicans got behind it at the local level and have effectively move what is "normal" rightward. That effort is the reason we still have debates over whether evolution should be taught. Republicans have taken on leadership roles everywhere and it has served them well. We are taking that lesson locally and getting progressives in the pipeline for futures candidacy.

Obama ran on not being an ideologue. He also pointed to grassroots organizing as the source for real change. WI just showed us what can happen if we come together and do that work with organization and discipline. They provided a good example of how to get things done. That is exactly what Obama talked about us doing. Remember how he has talked about "service?" I was serving on a state commission when he was elected. After Obama was inaugurated, we got emails on behalf of the WH thanking us for our service and encouraging us to continue.

Stopping and\or dragging the country back from from the rightward trend is largely up to us.

that was a fascinating article.

You don't have to STAND for ANYTHING,
and get to insult those who DO!
:party:


"The only thing in the Middle of the Road
are Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos."
--Jim Hightower





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