Instead what we have seen so far is a mixed bag. He has passed historic healthcare legislation, a feat of leadership if nothing else. He's removed "combat" troops from Iraq, a positive sign, but whether he or events on the ground initiated their departure is tough to call. We have handed some peaceful regions of Afghanistan off to other parties, but their leadership is as corrupt as ever and we seem eager to entertain that, if it entertains our interests.
Before I talk about his most recent decisions and how they reflect on his leadership and advisors, I want to highlight that I don't think any president should operate with as much power as today's executive branch does. Bush expanded presidential wartime power to an unprecedented level. In that way, the Tea and Republican parties get things right. (Purportedly) aiming to leave things up to states, they reduce the amount of ways the Fed can screw things up. Government is only good at a couple, but necessary, functions. Some of the most important functions our government should play include protecting our country, regulating commerce and deciding (to an extent) what functions should be up to states. These are all constitutionally defined but in the vacuum, where corporate interests, instead of states, lobby Washington with ease, the puzzle gets complicated.
This Euro-centric fear of America becoming a socialist country because of Obamacare is unfounded. The idea of our healthcare system, with all its privatized incentives for just about everyone but the patient, becoming socialized is ludicrous, if not for our greed alone.
Another thing I should point out. I'm not in dire, full-agreement with free market economics, either. Call me a socialist (I love gettin' paid those Benjamin's son!) or hippy (I shower), I just think the pursuit of money for money's sake in a world with such limited resources and massive socio-economic problems is non-compassionate. In the parlance of modern American, you're an asshole. If you went in to finance for the money, you're an asshole. I have lots of friends who are assholes. They are killing it on Wall St., or maybe not, but some of them are interested in the system, some interested in the cash, and none on helping people who have no access to a market that greatly affects them.
Case in point: when the world's financial bubble burst because of the assholes at AIG, Goldman, Lehman etc who quite literally bet on the investments poor people would make in shitty loans, 20 million Chinese migrant workers lost manufacturing jobs. Now, a dire free marketeer will tell me that this is the nature of supply and demand, a necessary expansion and contraction in the market and to that I say NO! If you have the information to tell me that you fully understand a system, it is your duty as a human being to make that system the most compassionate it can be. 20 million people losing their livelihood because of the decisions of a mere hundred at a couple worldwide banking firms is not free market economics, it's criminal.
This is where Obama really fucked up. He was compassionate to those who needed affordable healthcare and those who were discriminated against by insurance. He signed a bill making sure women are afforded equal pay to their male counterparts and drew-down troops in Iraq. He has a hard line against sending ground troops to Libya, while supporting a popular uprising with resources we can commit. Although we are obviously interested in Libya's oil market, we feign interest in democracy to protect their people, a sentiment I'm sure the Arab world appreciates. But Obama could not remain compassionate in the face of that which would crumble most of us, money.
Well knowing the people and intertwined system of large firms, academia, lack of regulation and personal greed that cost the public billions, in not trillions, Obama put the same faces back in their same (non)-regulatory places. If we wanted to follow some lame, psuedo-academic, analogy, we could think of the economy like a ship. If the captain and his mates are responsible for running the rig aground, killing everyone and distorting the hull of the ship, do you hire said captain again? Or if this was sports, a GM and his staff lowers ticket prices until the team is bankrupt, all the while reporting profit, what would happen to said GM.
Yet, we still have Timothy Geithner as our Treasury Secretary. The only thing that sucks more than his haircut, are his policies. Geithner's advocacy to bail out Lehman has been widely criticized and decision to let AIG exec's have bonuses after the crisis is downright criminal. Look up a picture of this guy on google, his stare will give you the willies.
So Obama is doing alright with foreign policy. He's taking steps to allay hatred in the Arab world and fighting terror in a more subtle way. He's taken an open stance against torture and would like to close Guantanamo, something that has eluded him thus far.
Domestically he's far more conflicted. Republican/Tea Partiers will try and defund "Obamacare" and talks are in the works about how much of the budget to slash, not to mention a full-blown government shut down, possible this weekend!
I really wanted to go see Mt. Rushmore on tour this summer...
But I'd like to spread a message of persistence and non-complacence. We have the info and tools as American citizens to hold our politician's feet to the fire with this stuff. It's very easy to say "politicians will be politicians" with this stuff, but that's weak and inherently un-American. Informed criticism and voting is patriotic and if we want to keep this ship afloat, we all have to pay attention.
