Comments on: Garry Wills: of betrayals, “fairy tales,” and Pied Pipers

By: Some people learn nothing, forget everything, and can’t shoot straight : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Sun, 16 Jan 2011 16:23:54 +0000

[...] actually hear their words or see their clear meaning. (Remember about a year ago, when Wills stamped his feet about Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, which was after all only a clear fulfillment of a campaign promise?) In the words of our last [...]

By: On the record, 13 months later? : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 14:02:34 +0000

[...] I’ve written here before about Wills’s concerns about Afghanistan, and his (in my opinion) strange feelings of betrayal by a man who promised to escalate the war in Afghanistan throughout his 2008 campaign. But his particular pique at Obama about Afghanistan takes on a new dimension now that we know that Wills was consulted by the President. Wills gave Obama some good advice in my view, most of which Obama has ignored–but hey: he’s the President! He owns it now. I still don’t get why people are angry with Obama for actually following through on a campaign pledge. [...]

By: Professor Zero

Professor Zero — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:59:16 +0000

Alexander Cockburn in the current _Nation_ compares the Obama administration to Eisenhower’s — funny, interesting, and not too far off.

The thing is, HRC came out and *said* that was how she’d be. Obama said he’d be close to that. Some people, like me, when our actual candidates didn’t make it to the end of the primary, decided to roll dice on the possibility that Obama’s vagueness could mean he’d be slightly more progressive than HRC. He turns out to be just as bad. But he never said he’d be that different. So I don’t get the upsetness from anyone on the Obama vs HRC score.

I’m more interested in Matt’s comment (I think it’s #3 in the thread), about the Democrats *in general* and their unwillingness to govern as Democrats. This of course didn’t start with HRC/Obama but it really is the larger issue and it is where I think Democrats might want to focus.

My Democratic senator, for instance, doesn’t support a public option in the healthcare bill.

By: Russ

Russ — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:32:41 +0000

Anyone surprised by Obama’s recent actions regarding Afghanistan either weren’t paying attention during the campaign, or were too starstruck to actually hear what he was saying. I think it’s a terrible policy, but he is doing exactly what he said he would do, which was to “get the job done” by sending more troops:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/20/obama.afghanistan/

By: Emma

Emma — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:03:46 +0000

I don’t see anybody arguing that “Clinton would have been so much better”. It seems to me that the relevant question is why Obama supporters thought that Obama would be so much better. Clinton is irrelevant to Obama’s performance as President just as Clinton was irrelevant to one’s pre-elections hopes and expectations for Obama.

Continuing to focus on Clinton is just another method of evading discussion of why Obama is so bad and why so many people seemed to think he’d be so much better than he is.

For me, the only reason Clinton comes into this discussion at all is because she was cast as the embodiment of all evil (she wants Obama to be assassinated! she’s ambitious! she’s a racist! she wants you to vote for her just because she’s a woman) against which Obama was cast as the shining prince on a horse. That dynamic is relevant, I think, to discussing why Obama is, apparently, a huge disappointment to so many.

But how Clinton would have been as President — irrelevant. So, I’m never going to talk about what my expectations were for Clinton should she have been elected. It’s all moot.

I, personally, don’t care that anyone feels betrayed by Obama. In fact I think it’s kind of bitterly funny with a lot of schadenfreude thrown in. And to all of those people so disappointed in Obama, I’ll give you the same advice given to me after the primaries: Get. Over. It. And, anybody else who feels “personally betrayed”: Get. Over. Yourself.

IOW, Don’t Agonize — Organize. If you have a commitment to ending the war in Afghanistan, act on that commitment. But, IMO, unless the anti-war movement is ready to destroy Obama’s presidency over this war, it’s not going to have any impact at all. And I don’t see anybody who’s willing to do that. So, IMO, you might as well resign yourselves to another 8 years of total irrelevance.

By: Professor Zero

Professor Zero — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:02:52 +0000

What I don’t understand is why so many people on this thread seem to think Clinton would have been so much better. So much passion and venom, and that election’s over — instead of putting energy there, what about trying to get someone decent elected to some office now occupied by the ultra-right?

By: quixote

quixote — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:25:25 +0000

(Just to clarify, I didn’t mean that Hillary isn’t a politician. Only that the gulf between word and deed didn’t look quite as wide and intentional.)

By: KoshemBos

KoshemBos — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 16:42:13 +0000

I didn’t vote for Obama in the primaries or for Kerry in 2004. I am not in the habit of voting for empty suits. And in the case of Obama I didn’t want to join a movement of well off people (I am doing fine myself) who think that they know better.

I am not surprised by the cruel move of sending 30,000 fresh targets to Afghanistan or that after a year Obama has suddenly discovered the unemployed (after divvying bonuses at Goldman’s).

By: Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 15:50:35 +0000

Awesome post. I know Obama would not be perfect (nor would Clinton have been, and I waffled between them quite a bit at various times during the primaries), but I did think he would wind down the wars. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I believed that, but I did.

By: Sweet Sue

Sweet Sue — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 06:35:24 +0000

Well, I do remember Bill Clinton’s Balkan policy and the countless number of Muslims whose lives were saved because of it. And the fact that not one American serviceman lost his life in that conflict and that the peace treaty engineered by Clinton and Richard Holbrooke was signed in Dayton, Ohio.