We just had Bush who frequently proposed things that were completely disastrous for the country and the world. He would stubbornly fight to the end for his torture, deregulation of the financial markets, redistribution of wealth to the upper classes, tax breaks for Hummers, stupid wars etc. His stubborness of course just made things worse. Now we have Obama who comes out with good programs in such areas as the enviroment, health care, war and peace, financial regulation. However, it looks like at the first hint of opposition he caves in and settles for perhaps ineffective compromises. What really ticks me off is the health care initiative. It is starting to look like he will settle for some sort of massively expensive plan to prop up the ruinously expensive insurance company middle men and perhpaps cover say half of the uninsured. Will the guy fight, I mean really fight, for anything. Don't get me wrong semi-accomplishing his goals is better than the outright destruction of the Bush programs as proposed and enacted. Anyone else see it this way? Hopefully I am being too pessimistic.
What has he compromised on so far? It's dangerous to make assumptions in the midst of the legislative process. Recall the stimulus bill - it appeared he was caving to the House's insanity in that, but he really just worked behind the scenes on the Senate Bill and ended up getting mostly what he originally wanted. One leadership skill he has that is underrated is that he doesn't seem to have the need to get all the credit for the design of something - but his administration's fingerprints do tend to be all over things. In terms of health care - keep in mind he's always been more about a compromise solution involving the health care industry than other Democrats (Hillary, Edwards in the primaries). I mentioned this in the primaries, but his whole philosophy towards governing (one I like, as a moderate - but I understand it would disappoint progressives) is that he starts to the left rhetorically but clearly aims for a middle ground solution. Examples of this in the Illinois Senate were the health and police bills there. The strengths of that approach are that you're more likely to get things passed and less likely to have them deconstructed as soon as a new party takes control. Going the other route can be counterproductive - take the health care in 1994 for example. They went the no-compromise route, and as a result, they missed an opportunity and they are fighting the same fight 15 years later. It's more of a high-risk approach to go that route.
Obama will fight for Drayton to continue signing our top draft picks until we rebuild our farm system!
Obama gave up on the mortgage modification bill as soon as it appeared that the Senate fight was going to be close. Why in the world would Obama giving up on his initiatives be a shock when he gave up on the mortgage mod bill (which during the campaign he called a top priority)? For the record...the financial deregulation that allowed the mortgage mess to happen began under the Clinton watch. It was then expanded under Bush. Perhaps you should remove your partisan goggles for a minute and see that both parties suffer from a suck affliction. It will continue to be this way so long as those with deep pockets can buy legislators.
Well I hope you are right. I am afraid that wrt to health care covering half of the uninsured with costly subsidies for inefficient private insurance middle men might insure (ha ha) that the remining folks go uninsured for many years. Similarly talk about withdrawing troops from Iraq while leaving half of them under the guise of protecting the consulate or whatever may effectively diffuse the momentum for peace and keep us there for generations. We will see.
Criticisms like this, especially from liberals, were going to be inevitable. I said this during the campaign that one problem that I saw with the Obama campaign was that his mantra of "Change" and his proposals gave the impression that we were going to see very pronounced policy move leftward when at the sametime he talked a lot about compromising. Those two ideas are opposed to each other and he wasn't going to fulfill one or other.
