Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Again Ricks annoys me so much that I feel compelled to respond:
There are several reasonable answers to your question of 'if Obama's a progressive why are they angry with him?' - one would be he isn't really one of them but rather simply exploiting his general sympathy for their cause and milking how well the phony transcendence of his 'post racial identity' fits into the naive idealism of that cause - ie the idea of being a celebrity president appealed to him and he was willing to aggressively pursue that by whatever means; the ordeal and burden and ugly complications of actually leading one of the greatest powers to ever roam the earth, not so appealing after all. In other words, he's a progressive as long as it doesn't get in the way of what really matters to him.

It was obvious to any unbiased observer as far back as the 2004 keynote address that Obama represented the final victory of style over substance in American politics, a victory that the advent of TV and new media seemed to be promising for some time now - what little substance could be gleaned from his performances was based on a trumped up idealist narrative that initially fed the delusions of people who desperately wanted to believe a new age was at hand and then later the delusions of those who were simply sick of Bush.

Now I'm sure if he could give a bunch of nice speeches and by such artifice implement or call into being without discord or anger or upheaval a 'true' progressive agenda he would most happily do it - but the zeal of a true ideologue is founded on the absolutism of their beliefs - the only thing Obama absolutely believed in was himself as the first black president - that's done, time to get out there on the celebrity lecture/noble cause tour where he'll no doubt make Bill Clinton look like an amateur [in fact he may be so frustrated by the constraints of high office at this point that he has come to believe that he can now serve the world best by being defeated in 2012, blaming it on backward thinking types that 'just don't get it' and then running round the globe delivering his transcendent message to the quivering masses].

Personally I believe the above scenario is largely correct, it's how I tend to read the man [although his approach to domestic policy only may read somewhat differently] - but there are alternatives - Obama is indeed a radical but either just not very good at it or suffering from having over estimated his ability to deliver - or he is very good at it but has come to believe that real change will require a generational process of incremental steps under cover of well crafted lies [watch Obama now pretend he's a deficit hawk], which frustrates true believers who, as I've said, draw their energy from an unrealistic absolutism - the point being that Ajami's criticism, although possibly not well argued or too narrowly argued, can be defended - of course one would have to not be in denial regarding their disappointed or ill-conceived love for the Obama to see that.
update: I'm attacked by Ricks' supporters who claim my view way too speculative - I'm writing as if privy to Obama's secret thoughts! One nerd cracks joke about my 'spidey sense' viz Obama which is just embarrassing. This is classic dismissal of a criticism by claiming something claimed by it that hasn't been claimed - you think you know what he's thinking. The mere act of voting for Obama a year ago was an act of wild speculation given the man's thin resume - so being accused of taking too many speculative liberties by these people is a bit rich. But of course I am engaging in a subjective interpretation of his words and deeds and don't deny it - my original sense of the man was that he's a charlatan whose pleasing optics, smooth style and visceral appeal to ultra liberal sensibilities could prove dangerous, especially in the wake of the vilification of Bush and the consequent hit to the repute of conservative ideals - every opinion I've formed since has been influenced by that original feeling - and I suppose it's not necessarily unfair to suggest there may be something illegitimate about that - not clinically sound, as it were. Then again, is there an opinion anywhere that isn't somewhat compromised in such a way? All political opinions, as opposed to political reporting, are more or less speculative, are judgment calls - what matters is if there seems to be a logic to what you're saying and evidence to suggest maybe you're right - and the fact that I pretty much nailed him on Afghanistan, had a solid sense of how wrong his approach to Iran and Israel would prove - predicted that he would seem to want to try and set policy through words and avoid the messy consequences of action and that his various 'initiatives' might tend to come across as confused and incoherent [witness his recent mishandling of the Christmas terror attempt] because the drudgery of governing would be of little interest to him, predicted or at least intimated that he'd tend to view accommodation as the more enlightened foreign policy approach and like to imagine I was the first to see a possible Carter redux with the coming of the Obama, a line of conjecture which is the cover story this week of the very magazine Ricks writes for - well, not bad sooth saying all in all I think, given my amateur status.

[then again, maybe I'm completely wrong - well, not completely wrong but underestimating how Obama's self-promotion can still be tied to a motivated idealist, or progressive if you prefer, agenda - that the two things don't need to be mutually exclusive - although I'm not sure the above necessarily suggests they are - this from conservative stalwart Robert Kagan:
For a United States bent on “problem solving” with Russia and China, the easiest solution may be to accede to their desires, compelling those in their presumed spheres of influence to accede as well. This cannot help but alter America’s relations with its allies.

As it happens, the vast majority of those allies happen to be democracies, while the great powers being accommodated happen to be autocracies. The Obama administration’s apparent eschewing of the democracy agenda is not just a matter of abandoning the allegedly idealistic notion of democracy promotion in failed or transition states. It is not choosing not to promote democracy in Egypt or Pakistan or Afghanistan. And it is not just about whether to continue to press Russia and China for reform—which was part of the old post–World War II strategy, continued under post–Cold War administrations. The Obama administration’s new approach raises the question of whether the United States will continue to favor democracies, including allied democracies, in their disputes with the great-power autocracies, or whether the United States will now begin to adopt a more neutral posture in an effort to get to “yes” with the great autocratic powers. In this new mode, the United States may be unhinging itself from the alliance structures it had erected in the post–World War II strategy.

In fact, as part of its recalibration of American strategy, the Obama administration has inevitably de-emphasized the importance of democracy in the hierarchy of American interests. Most have assumed this is a reaction to George W. Bush’s rhetorical support for democracy promotion, allegedly discredited by the Iraq War. This may be part of the explanation. But the Obama administration’s de-emphasis of democracy should also be understood as the direct consequence of its new geopolitical strategy—a sign of America’s new international neutrality.
Kagan is of the school that believes Obama directs a deliberate attempt by progressives to turn America into, to use the colloquial shorthand, a version of France - or probably more accurately, a transatlantic copy of the EU but with a more robust military to be used as an international constabulary and a moderating counter-weight to the new true super powers, India and China [with a regenerated USSR tagging along] - in fact if I'm not mistaken I believe certain left wing French intellectuals have been promoting this very scenario for sometime now - the idea I take it being that the more civilized, more enlightened West has evolved past the era of power struggles and can now recede into the background, safe in our socialized democracies, protected by the superiority of our ideas and institutions [and our value to them as consumers] and from this refined distance moderate the grievances of the new competing powers as they struggle to rise to our level. Something like that anyway. The conceptual foundation here would seem to be that all power is relative - that the West, judged by the past norms of military and economic might, may be in decline, but seen in a light that rejects those definitions is actually evolving to a higher plane.

But - is that dream so wrong? I dunno - my first complaint would be that it assumes an awful lot, and of course that's the downfall of all idealist philosophies: they only seem to work if you allow certain assumptions to pass uncontested. So that's a big strike against it, and it's very possibly a third strike, if you will. I'll have to think about it.

One thing that occurs to me: if Obama is a believer in this new world order, why would he call for the abolishment of nuclear weapons? Nukes, or something like them , would be absolutely necessary in such a new world for keeping the peace, as final arbiter of disputes - so calling for their demise does not seem in keeping with long term progressive goals - although is perfectly in keeping with status quo idealist naivety]