Age of Obama:
The first six weeks

The Audacity of Nope …

We have the first big presidential interview in print since the Advent.  In the NY Times.

So Changeless and dispiriting there’s almost nothing worth saying.

Has it only been six weeks?  Seven?  Time sighs when you’re having dung.

1. Pakghanistan and Iraq

Obama, when asked if we are winning the war in Afghanistan, says flatly “no.”

And (my reading of) his comments on the Petraeus plan and the Taliban support the argument against Surging over there.

That is: He seems to realize that the Taliban hardly exists as something that Pentagon machinery may dissassemble.

(What exists, and what have existed for centuries, are Pashtun tribes in the habit of banding together then squabbling with each other.  Any of these assemblies that lobs lead at assemblies which themselves are not lobbing lead at assemblies declaring themselves aligned with the installed Western leadership in Kabul the press tends to refer to as “the Taliban.” )

Yet the prez seems to remain solid behind the Surge.

And parsing out the Petraeus Plan, the prez suggests the key is to separate the strands of the skirmishers into those crudely speaking For Us and those not and set them in multilateral balance against each other.  Peacefully preferably but balance is the thing — ol’ Equilibrium. Realpolitik 101.

And Petraeus is the wise white man who understands these things? The thousand lines of force to be played like a harp?  Metternich of Bactria?

Maybe such razzle-dazzle Henry the K stuff might work. ?? Long enough to function as a fig leaf for withdrawal anyway. ??  But why is our Metternich a general? Again the shades of Lansdale are real and dismaying.

The prez goes out of his way to praise former CIA head Hayden — who in December declared Pakistan the epicenter of islamic terrorism. Perhaps ground war there is indeed (as surmised here since December) in the cards … It would seem to be the only reason for escalating across the border in Afghanistan.

The prez also confirmed, in person, this past week that between 35-50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq after all “combat troops” are pulled in August 2010.  Sure kid sure.

Surely the MyObamists are wondering WTF?

(Let’s see, 50,000, that’s only about 3800 per Pentagon Permanent Base — peanuts! Be reasonable …)

The only thing certain is that our Afghan status quo — ie, the Surge booked last spring and now engaged to up the force to some 60,000 — makes no sense.  Whether it resolves with properly papered withdrawal or ground war in Pakistan … The Pentagon seems to want the latter, and this interview does nothing to dilute the impression that the Pentagon is in charge of foreign affairs.

The president seems to be observing. Ironically Detached. Bemused …

2. Health Care

Meanwhile this week he told the Congress that he wouldn’t be surprised to see the health care plan he outlined during the campaign fade away.

It’s clear that no Change of substance will happen here. Existing programs will be tweaked, supplemented.   Band-aids.  Lots of Band-aids.  Akin to Timmy Geithner’s plan for the big banks, come to think of it.  It’s clear universal coverage is out the window.

Hillary on this during the campaign was right — that to concede anything short of universal coverage is to give the insurance lobby all the opening they need to water things back down to status quo.

Obama doesn’t seem to care, content (as with the Pentagon) to let the nearly Dead White Males handle it.

What did Ted Kennedy think, counting the days of his life, as the Prez, like a plurality pleader, conceded field position on this?

3. Finance

He dismisses as simplistic blogs calling for nationalization of the zombie banks. Not clear if he means long-term or transitory as a means of doing TARPlike sales.

In any case the published words seem to confirm that Timmy’s in charge over there.

4. And so …

The impression is of a president who has few ideas he cares enough about to engage in politics over.

With the strongest constellation of Donkey power in Congress in my lifetime, he treds about in his socks as if Gingrich and DeLay were running the House.

Or worse, perhaps:  He seems to not believe in politics per se.  To find them “childish” as he put it in his inaugural address.  To reduce ideas to “ideology,” for which he expresses suave disdain.

Content to allow generals to run foreign policy.  And Beltway Professionals to assemble some sort, apparently any sort, of “health care package.”

Even the (ludicrous) notion of universal coverage for children only, with which he distinguished himself from Hillary during the campaign, seems expendable in favor of getting a posse of GOPhers on the bandwagon.

“Whatever works …” the president calls for.
Works to what end?  All solutions to the disaster of US health care involve prioritizing values. Where are his? He seems unwilling to even speak them beyond the sort of speech one gives in a campaign.

He seems not himself a technocrat (seems above that, personally), but to conceive it his new job to give technocrats conference rooms and press support while they do that voodoo they do so well.

Little Change We Need.Little change at all.

The other day I asked an old friend — who worked on Bobby Kennedy’s campaign and ever after as a pro bono lawyer in New York — what he thought of the new prez.

“Disappointed. It’s pure Beltway. He’s not reaching out.  But I’ve been disappointed since 1968.”