Posted on 09/06/2009 2:18:53 PM PDT by Maggie Maggie Maggie
Back to town comes Barack Obama after his holiday on Martha's Vineyard, to plummeting polls and sour columns rolling his presidency into the hearse. The memory offers scant comfort, but the previous two Democratic presidents endured similar rentrees to the nation's capital.
When Bill Clinton got back from his own outing to Martha's Vineyard in the late summer of 1993, the collapse of his administration was already three months old. He was well into his rebirth cycle as a committed Republican.
As an opposing, progressive challenge to business as usual, even by the wan standard of its own timid promises, his presidency had decisively failed by the closing week of May, on the last Saturday of which he signalled surrender by recruiting the old Nixon/Reagan/Bush hand, David Gergen, as his new public relations chief.
Jimmy Carter achieved his zenith as an agent of positive change on only his third day in office, when he pardoned all who refused to honour their draft notices from 1964 to 1973, the years of the Vietnam War. On August 6, 1979 Carter formally surrendered his power by installing Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve, tasking him with waging war on inflation, with large sacrifices imposed on those who had voted for the president.
In terms of popularity and political strength Clinton peaked at the time of the Democratic Party convention in New York in 1992. Decline was not long delayed. By the time of his election in November the long sunset had already commenced.
By inauguration the Clinton administration was already low in the water. The president-elect and his advisers had destroyed their room for manoeuvre in the formulation of economic policy. They fanned budget-cutting hysteria by accepting the silly Republican claim that - surprise! - the prospective deficit was going to be more severe than expected.
When he gave his presidential oath, Clinton's presidency was, as anything other than a vehicle for economic orthodoxy and Wall Street wisdom, in the ditch. A few days later he pushed the wreck into the crusher by his catastrophic handling of the issue of gays in the military. Before the week was out, the Pentagon had its majority in Congress and the Christian right was trumpeting renewal and victory. The health insurance debacle toppled all surviving hopes for constructive change.
It's hard to know when Obama peaked. Was it at the convention in Denver? Or the election night rally in Chicago? Or his formal inauguration in January? But by the day of his election he had already signed up to Paulson's bail-out of the banks. By the hour Chief Justice Roberts swore him in, he'd chosen as his chief economic advisors the bankers' men, Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner, with Carter's friend Volcker on the sideline. By the end of his first month we knew Wall Street and Goldman Sachs were firmly in control.
Here we are in September and what have Obama's liberal supporters got to cling to, by way of evidence that positive change is on the way? Economically, we seem to be heading - well ahead of schedule - into 1937, the year the New Deal crashed onto the rocks. The energy bill, driven by junk science and junk nostrums, has been a detour into disaster. Health reform is levitating towards the graveyard, borne along by Blue Dog Democrats, nerveless salesmanship by the White House and as ripe an eruption of insanity by the know-nothing legions as I've ever witnessed.
In a way it's inspiring to see ideological principle trump raw self-interest. Night after night one can see ex-army men tottering out from million-dollar life-saving operations in the local (government-funded) Veterans Affairs hospital to hurl invective against "socialised medicine". Who'd have thought that the "healthcare debate" would be the beard for Klan rallies?
Many Obama dreamers hoped that their man would introduce some minimal shift for the better in America's relationship with the rest of the world. Now all they have to look forward to is General Stanley McChrystal marching up to Capitol Hill and into the Oval Office to demand more troops for Afghanistan.
In relations with Russia, Obama and vice president Joe Biden have remained substantively committed to Nato expansionism. In Latin America, the handling of the coup in Honduras and warm relations with Colombia's Uribe suggest a sinister larger strategy of counter-attack on the leftist trends of the past few years.
It's a dark vista overall. Some big opportunities - like a full-frontal assault on the power of the banks and of Wall Street - will never return. What can Obama do to regain the initiative?
There are two men capable of uniting large numbers of Americans in detestation: Dick Cheney and George Bush, in that order. Typically, Obama has shifted from foot to foot on his administration's posture towards these Home Team Nazis. Now Attorney General Eric Holder has gingerly inclined to the view that maybe, perhaps, the United States government should inch towards the legal standard on prosecution of torturers required of it by a law signed by Ronald Reagan, not to mention the Geneva Protocols.
With their drive for impeachment the Republicans dominated the headlines and all but paralysed the Clinton White House for two years. Now it should be payback time. Obama's pledge to the American people: Cheney and Bush behind bars by 2012, plus Gonzales, Yoo, and the rest of the pack. We crave drama. From Obama we're not getting it, except in the form of racist rallies. This is his last, best chance.
I think he already used up his last throw and Vice President Cheney hit it with a huge Louisville Slugger and knocked it clear out of the park.
Ok, does the left really, I mean really believe that if barry jails GW Bush and D Cheney, that barry will become “it” again?
If (and I do not believe it would happen) just speculating, if it were to happen, all hell would break out in this country, the likes have not been seen before.
Is this satire?
Big-time!
It seems to be English and remember Monthy Python was not a comedy troupe, it was really a documentary of life in the UK. So it could be satire. It could be real.
Oh, yeah...please, Hussein DO THAT....manufacture a case against G.W. Bush and Dick Cheney....that would REALLY REALLY do a lot for your popularity.
(hee hee hee hee)
Snippet: It's extremely unlikely, but the Obama administration is taking its first steps along a path that could lead in that direction, with the investigation of Central Intelligence Agency interrogators involved in the war on terror. "You don't know where these things are going to end up," former CIA agent Peter Brookes told me. "They could go to very high levels in the government."
NOT!!
This writer shows that the UK is clueless about US politics.
In reality, those "large numbers" would toss Ozero out on his flappy ears if he tried this.
So this author wants Obama to squander whatever political capital he has left on prosecuting Bush-Cheney? LOL! It’ll be 1994 all over again in Congress.
Use that strategy zero, and Bush and Cheney become heroes! Just in time for Cheney to run in ‘12! Cool
1994 in Congress? How about 1776 in the streets?
Hope Obama changes and does the —Van Jones.
Well, that too. Just don’t shoot me, as I am darker than the rest of you.
Wouldn't this be funny. The Obama administration publicly accusing somebody else of fascism. Something tells me they don't want to touch that third-rail.
That particular one is discussed here, for any who’ve missed it:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2332450/posts
We are headed down a road where every successive administration will have show trials of their predecessor.
Might as well change the name of the Potomac to the Potemkin river.
Looks like the insane base of the ‘rat party is getting restless. They still want Bush’s blood, and Barry and his cronies will dangle out the possibility from time to time - just to keep them quiet. It’s a dangerous game they’re playing with these whackjobs; my hope is that they are the only ones who end up burned by their own machinations.
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