The President: Why Can’t We
Be Friends?
Ed Note: First posted January 29, 2009. Updated in comments as the prez continues to surprise by exhibiting (re politics) a tin ear and bad hands. Clank the Robot …
1. Good good good: Obama moves to un-do Bush-Cheney labor policies.
He’s also done two handfuls of other good things, eg, undoing the Presidential Papers Act regulations that baby Bush (apparently to prevent his father’s Gulf War papers from becoming public property) put into effect during his own first week in office.
So, hats off to the new prez for this slew of moves at the periphery of the news.
2. Have you ever seen the rain?
But elsewhere — front and center — the chaos and lack of action are now worrisome. FDR signed his first major economic move — closing banks for sixty days — the evening of his first day in office. Obama is still talking about hoping to have his own sometime in February.
It seems Obama is trying to move ahead in stately fashion with dreams long in planning, while at the same time flailing to keep nostrils above the waves of the financial crisis.
Eg, the dream of Changing the way Washington behaves, replacing partisanship with Cooperation, a la mode the great Russian anarchist Kropotkin.  If the country were healthy — as it seemed to be when he declared his intention to run in 2006 – there might be at least a shred of hope here. Today there seems none, and what might have passed as high-mindedness is looking like naivete.
3. There’s a bad moon on the rise
Politics are as they are for well rooted reasons. The Change I want and the world needs is to see the nostalgic reaction of Neo-Liberalism (Thatcherism/Reaganism) buried. If this means burying most of the Congressional Republicans, so be it.
But Obama seems intent on making them his friends. And his reaction to Rush Limbaugh’s antics suggests the new prez was surprised by the blowhard’s heartfelt wish that he fail.
Much has already been written about an aspect of Obama’s psyche: his charming Friendliness, rooted in having a white mom and a black dad and growing up with friends and loved ones on both sides of that social divide.
Mediating, saying no to separatism, encouraging togetherness, and pulling it off routinely as he made his way up the ladder …
That does seem to be his Way. But there is no reason to thing he can change the essence of politics in the capital of what remains the world’s most powerful state.
4. I ain’t no fortunate son
It was no accident that the US normalized relations with China in 1978, that Thatcher became Prime Minister a year later, and Reagan was elected a year after that.
Whatever Neo-Liberalism may have been across the pond, over here it was the ad campaign behind which the owner-operators of the US cut ties to the rest of the nation and moved their capital to Asia, where labor was and remains plentiful at pennies on the dollar.
Obama certainly has given a lot of lip service to the plight of the working class, and the words express genuine concern. But it’s not clear he’s psychologically able and willing to join the battle. He, quite naturally, wants everybody to be friends.
If he fails to achieve Change We Need, the failure will be much more than personal.  Power exists and cannot be wished away. If one doesn’t use it, it writhes like an unmanned fire hose, uselessly and destructively … Until someone else grabs hold.
(Re “someone else grabbing hold:” Something like this happened in 2000, when, by means not yet clear, the longtime peripheral maniacs of the Likud Lobby (whom during the 80s were personally sidelined by Reagan in favor of George Schultz and Bush pere) grabbed the reins of a feckless faux Compassionate Conservative’s foreign policy.)
