More like this
Obama’s last chance to save his presidency from failure
After his surrender on healthcare and banking, the only way Obama can save his presidency is to put Bush and Cheney behind bars
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.
By the end of Obama’s first month we knew Wall Street was firmly in control
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. ·
Comments are now closed on this article
Comments
One of the reasons I like Cockburn is because it is clear that he is in possession of more information, insight and analysis than any American president or anyone else who might have the temerity to have views that are different than his own.
Cockburn does not sit in the Oval Office. He has no experience in government. He has no access to information and intelligence and access to experts that Mr Obama does.
Alexander Cockburn is an armchair Jihadi with a soapbox.
THIS ARTICLE IS 100% RIGHT.
BUSH AND CHENEY BELONG BEHIND BARS BEFORE ***THEY STEP UP THEIR GAME***. The world should tremble at that possibility.
O'Bomber simply hasn't got the cojones to prosecute either Bush or Cheney. This is a complete misunderstanding of the situation. Whether you vote Republican or Democrat, you get WHAT WALL STREET WANTS. 90 people blown sky-high by yankee-doodle scum this afternoon in Afghanistan, and does anyone give two hoots? Noooo, as long as yankee's got his triple-cheese thick-crust pizza to keep scoffing, he doesn't give a single damn who he murders or why.
I think every democrat in the United States should be incarcerated and be so for 50 years. This should start with Henry Reed and Nancy Pelosi,Obama,Biden etc on down the line. What they are purporting is insane. as a veteran,I feel every one of us should line up behind and support our ex-president. We have votes and at the next election,exercise those votes and get the Democrats out of Washington. Sour grapes is all the are. Dump PELOSI & REED & OBAMA!!!!!!
America would do well to jail (and perhaps execute) its top criminal gangsters: the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld axis etc. The USA has been badly damaged in the last 8 years of misrule, becoming the butt of the world jokes. How embarassing it is for a so called Hyper Power to be getting their butts kicked in Afghanistan on a daily basis! Comments from yanks like JAQUEBAUER JAQUEBAUER (Kill em, Knife em etc) show how stupid American patriotic extremist fundamentalism can be. What do yanks like him think? that we (i.e. the rest of Planet Earth) are going to be impressed by their boasting? Please, u cant even conquer an impoverished wasteland like Afghanistan after 8 years of trying!!
America's cred is destroyed - Jailing Bush & Cheney would be a great start to reviving the USA.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but is this article simply stating that because all else is failing, President Obama should appease the people so he appears to be doing something right?
Surely if this is the case, it's a call for playground politics? "Nothing else is working so I'll just try and fit in with the cool kids". Unbelievable.
Bush/Cheney have waged war as war is meant to be waged. Kill the enemy. Thats the objective. No Miranda rights, no Motels for prisoners. Kill em where they stand. Knife em, shoot em, destroy them.
Obama on the other hand, is the treasonous wimpy imposter president from Kenya, that will be prosecuted and jailed for Treason. This man is a communist brain dead piece of garbage, that got elected because the American people are just as brain dead. The Brits have their Obama in Gordon Brown. But thats your problem, we will take care of ours.
Here we go again.Any criticism of the right wing regardless of the truth of the assertions runs foul of Alexander. In eight years of Bush and Cheney,they violated the constitution they were sworn to uphold and international norms to which the United States was a signatory.Yet alexander and his cohorts feel that there should be no review of those violations.These are people who speak incessantly about the rule of law yet are the first ones to break it if it suits their political agenda.Witness Watergate,Iran -contra,the savings and loan scandal,terror alerts that increased pre-election and suddenly tapered off or ended post election, and now the financial and economic collapse of the world economy.Yet alexander sees no evil, and speaks no evil,and hears no evil as long as it has to do with his conservative pals. President Obama has been in office less than nine months and I have lost count of the negative articles he has written about him though the issues he faults him on were inherited from -guess who-alexander's friends who can do no wrong. Mr Cockburn ,try once in a while to give the appearance that you do care about the facts, truth, and honesty in journalism.I am not holding my breadth though.
If the current administration follows through on this completely assinine political witch hunt against those who kept America safe from those who statedly want to kill us, and saved American lives, it will set a precedent where a future conservative administration will go after Obama, Holder, Emanuel, Conyers, Leahy, Frank and all that crowd for crimes against most of the American people, disregarding the Constitution (czars, etc) and abusing the legal system in a time of war. No, I don't own a lot of guns, but I do study the fact daily.
Excellent column inspiring a quite humorously demented comment from James "Doug in Colorado" Huggins, clearly a card carrying member of the know-nothing legion.
It must be said, though, that Obama has shown not the least hint of the courage that would inspire one to imagine that he would persue prosecution of the Cheney gang. Forget it, he's a Clinton tribute act.
What is politics?
A little boy goes to his dad and asks, 'What is politics'
Dad says, well, son, Let me try to explain it this way: I am the breadwinner, of the family, so let's call me capitalism. Your mom, she is the administration of the money, so we will call her the Government. We are here to take care of your needs so we will call you the people. The nanny, we consider the Working Class.
And your baby brother, we will call him the Future. Now think about that and see if that makes the sense.
So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what the dada had said.
Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.
He finds that the baby brother has severely soiled his diaper. He goes to his parents' room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting t wake her, he goes to the nanny's room. Finding the door locked, he peeps in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes to bed.
The next morning, the little boy says to his father, Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.
The father says. Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.
The little boy replies: Well while the Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in deep poo.
I thank you
Firozali A Mulla
What a load of clap trap from the three of you. Didn't you read the last message. People in the USA are too ignorant and too prone to the fear mongering foisted on them by the far right to even see what Mr. Obama is trying to do FOR them not TO them. It's got nothing to do with real socialism or communism which most Americans couldn't last one day under. Hey, Huggins, How many guns do you own? Pay attention, especially you, Cockburn!
Yeah, 'puleeze' try and put those two goons and their entire war-criminal pack behind bars, ... it just makes me drool in anticipation. But the case is only clear-cut, if Obama's team manages to renounce most of Bush's measures in the neighborhood of the Military Commissions Act (including all the dastard signing statements).
But that would, in my opinion, also require a speedy return of U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan -- literally impossible to do at the present time -- and thus this bankrupt, flailing behemoth will slide further into the deserved international insignificance.
Good riddance I'd say, if this B.S. by the nation of Limbaugh-hyped hysterical illiterates continues unabated -- the world can do well without the "leadership" of a hapless pack of war criminals and the crazies behind them that remind one of the creeps, that got prosecuted in Nuremberg some 60 years ago.
Why is it that anyone who suggests that President Obama is anything less than the second coming is automatically branded racist?
Is it because the media is crawling with pseudo-communists, left wing feminists and the equally left wing and eagerly compliant gays they have hand picked for compliance and surrounded themselves with? Anyone not going out of his/her way to heap unnecessary praise on women, 'ethnic minorities', gays, the disabled and gypsies (in that hypocritical order too, with the bigger 'mionorities' taking presedence) is branded sexist, racist, fascist and extreme right wing. Don't the quivering males who own the newspapers ever get tired of losing heaps of money to these divisive hypocrites who run their rags? It's about time there was a purge of these left wing crazies who, in trying to run the world according to their mad socially engineered agenda, are creating more division than ever, including where there previously was none. Real journalism is dying a terrible death at the hands of these people.
James Huggins is living in cloud cuckoo land. Failed states? Britain is not awful, neither is France. The US is a failed state with 50 million without medical help and the whole population in slavery to a banking system run by crooks. I await the dissolution of the US into three or four parts, one bit ruled by China, another by Mexico and a large chunk merging with Canada. No doubt 'the good ol' boys will be at war with each other in a free enterprise hell.
Government control can bring benefits - and ensure that all in need can access healthcare. Allowing a free for all in welfare services takes the welfare element out. Only the wealthy stay healthy. Government control of industries has been successful in some instances - particularly in France -(Renault, EDF). Many on the American right lack are limited in outlook, by nature insular, and lack the imagination to entertain the prospect of state/commercial structures other than the models they have always known.. They cannot defend their present healthcare system as fair and equitable, leaving them only the defence of attack - squealing bogey words like "Socialism". It's surprising they haven't compared these healthcare policy proposals to Hitler's. Give'em time.
Obama certainly seems to have lost his sense of direction; his judgement on the Cheney/Bush issue is hard to interpret as anything short of moral cowardice. Cheney's recent spirited public defence of torture as the means by which his administration "kept America safe" sounded like a confession to me. Why the hell is he still walking the streets?
How whacked out can you get, Cockburn. Obama's heavy handed Chicago-style intimidation tactics, corruption, total disorganization (how many un-vetted tax cheats in the inner circle...3, 4, 5? I lost count) and off-teleprompter incoherence make George Bush look like an eloquent statesman...and a patriot. Socialism is not a positive change, it just drags America down to the level of a failed state like, oh, let's say...Britain...France...Zambia... There's a revolving door between his unelected, unaccountable "czarbinet", his campaign staff, the Federal Reserve Bank, and Goldman-Sachs that makes the allegations of Cheney/Haliburton mischief look like goldfish turds by comparison. And government control of banking, auto manufacture, health care? How's that worked out for you in Britain? Bloody awful, innit? We want none of that.
Doug in Colorado