Honeymoon Over

No President is perfect. 

To be elected takes a broad coalition. It is going to include elements of the business community. It is going to include rich and powerful people, and interests which grassroots voters find anathema.

That said, recent actions by the Obama Administration have ended their honeymoon with me. 

1. Refusing to release the torture photos.
2. A policy that is too soft on big banks to be credible. 
3. The appointment of a Bell shill to the FCC. 
4. Justice Department support for copyright extremism. 

In the case of the first two bullet points I thought of naming this post "the playa gets played." While he ran as a firm opponent of the Iraq War, President Obama has allowed himself to be manuevered into supporting policies that contradict his promises. He has even sent up his own Bush-like war supplemental. While he ran as a skeptic over bank power, he has staffed his Administration with Wall Street favorites, who treat big banks that built casinos as "too big to fail"  and close small banks that did not take those risks.

In his defense, I know that Barack Obama is, temperamentally, an incrementalist. Like Lincoln, like FDR, he moves as cautiously as he can, waiting to be pulled into the more radical actions for which he will go down in history. I think those Bushies and proto-Bushies who are now directing policy will be overthrown if their policies don't work -- you couldn't say that in the Bush era.

There are also lobbies which are equally as adept at playing Democratic politics as Republican, which is why so many of us believe there is no real difference between the parties. Pharma companies, media companies, and phone companies have always given to both sides, raising their support for the incumbent side but never cutting the other side off. 

While Barack Obama ran a "tech" campaign, he did not run as the Netroots candidate. He never brought liberal bloggers into his tent as equals. He merely allowed them to be part of his larger coalition. 

The biggest bad  decision Obama has made was to make Rahm Emanuel (above) his chief of staff and push Howard Dean to the sidelines. 

Emanuel has long been anathema to the Netroots. He repeatedly pushed out Netroot candidates in favor of more conservative people, once it became apparent Democrats had a chance. 

The best example of this was Tim Mahoney (left), whom he recruited for Florida's 16h CD seat to take out David Lutrin, a Netroots candidate, in a primary to oppose Mark Foley, who was destroyed in a sex scandal. Two years later, Mahoney was destroyed in a sex scandal, and the seat is now held by a Republican.

Yet it was Emanuel who was hailed as the "savior" of the party. Not Howard Dean, whose campaign helped create the Netroots movement. Not Howard Dean, whose 50-state strategy brought the Democratic Party such success. Rahm Emanuel, the money guy.

I do understand that the Democratic Party must be, in order to govern, big enough to retain the loyalty of both loyalists and non-loyalists. But that does not mean the non-loyalists drive policy after it has been proven that the policy is a failure.

I suppose this is the real test. The Obama Administration is too new to yet call any of its policies a failure, and for the President to face what every President eventually must face. The need to adjust course.

George W. Bush failed that test, and so did his father. Bill Clinton turned the tiller too far to the right. Reagan passed the test without appearing to. 

The real definition of a great President is that ability to adjust course when things are going wrong without appearing to sell out his principles or his supporters in the process. It's what Reagan did in supporting the 1982 "largest tax increase in American history." It's what FDR did repeatedly. 

Will Obama be able to change course? 

That will define his Presidency.