"Obama's Could-Have-Been-Worse Presidency"

Newsweek Senior Washington correspondent and political columnist Howard Fineman is leaving the magazine to join The Huggington Post. Here are some excerpts from his final article for Newsweek that are worth pondering -- especially here on ShrinkRap, where the arguments over Obama's performance often become contentious and reflect two caring liberals, one more half-glass-full and one more half-glsss-empty. Watch for those in the Comments from Richard and me, with Mickey joining in occasionally. Now let's listen to what Finemant tells us. He began with the Katrina disaster.

"Obama was elected as a sensation, but he isn’t governing as one. He is putting points on the board, sometimes with little notice and comparatively less fuss than either was anticipated or was the case in the past.

". . . . The BP crisis and its political aftermath are apt symbols for what ails, and what ultimately might save, the president and the Democrats. They are going to get hammered in November. He and they overpromised and underperformed. But if they avoid a blowout it will in part be because voters see the Obama that is, not the fiction they worshiped or dreaded. He is the plodding “national incident commander” for our beleaguered era, and his accomplishments—to the extent he has them—so far are mostly about how our predicament would have been worse had it not been for his bailing of water. It’s a hard message to sell in the midst of 9.5 percent unemployment, when dollar discount stores are all the rage, and the gap between the rich and everyone else in the country is as wide as it has been since the Progressive Era.

But he is what he is. To get a real fix on our 44^th president and what he has done—or not done—it’s best to leave behind the grandiose language and grand expectations. He is a singular, history-making character, yet he is best defined by what he is not. He is neither the we-are-the-change savior his acolytes saw early on, nor is he the radical his foes see now. Obama is labeled a socialist by the hungriest recipients of government welfare in the history of commerce—Wall Street banks—but he is nothing more nor less than a legalistic believer in the regulatory state.

He is branded an alien Islamist by the same conservatives who would, in another context, celebrate his Alger-like rise to prominence from ethnic obscurity. And he is derided as timorous and unskilled by the same Democratic insiders whose clocks he cleaned in 2008—and by the same reporters (including me) who didn’t see him coming, and who had no real idea what Facebook was until it hit 'em in the face. Oddly, his foes think he is viciously effective; it’s only his friends who think he is ineffectual.

In fact, he’s neither. Halfway into his second year, we can see that he is just a smart but cautious guy who succeeds by dogged effort and not by eloquence (he really isn’t very eloquent) or by grand gesture. Critics on the left and right—from Paul Krugman to Sarah Palin—can say what they want, but the truth is that Obama and his team did help avoid, or forestall, a global economic collapse, in part because his demeanor was cool and his ability to grasp the details (and desire to do so) was evident well before he was even elected.

That told “the markets” that adult supervision and a steady hand were on the way. Yes, the “stimulus” was a throw-it-against-the-wall mess, but it also had some tangible results in jobs saved and deeper recession avoided, and those results came and now come, and at a time when a sense of governmental motion was critical. The official arbiters of business cycles just declared that the recession ended in mid-2009. Recovery is anemic, to be sure, but the system survived.

"Obama is a victim of the overheated rhetoric of his aides (“never let a crisis go to waste”) and his own evident desire to make more history than he made by merely being who he was. The vast health-care and financial-services bills were, taken as a whole, a political disaster when described in grand terms. But in their granular details are specific measures that do specific good for specific Americans: family-based insurance for kids up to 26; no dumping or automatic denial of beneficiaries; tight supervision of credit-card rates and of the deliberately impenetrable terminology banks use in consumer transactions. The health-care features go into effect this week. The president doesn’t have the rhetorical chops to tout such items with Clintonian, kitchen-table vividness (you can just imagine Big Dog with all this material to work with). But that doesn’t mean the incremental achievements aren’t real.

"Obama was elected as a sensation, but he is isn’t governing as one. He is putting points on the board, sometimes with little notice and comparatively less fuss than either was anticipated or was the case in the past: a pay-equity law for women; two quite liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court (without a filibuster in a filibuster-mad Senate); a renewal of Mideast peace talks. Road and bridge projects, however delayed, are now underway—bright spots in the much-derided Stim. “I didn’t vote for it because I wasn’t in the Senate yet,” says Sen. Al Franken. “But everywhere I go in Minnesota the people thank me for it.”

"On a personal level, there is much to be said for Obama—though little of it has been said. Again, his achievement is in the negative: the absence of disaster or embarrassment. He isn’t the egregious and impeached glamour hog/party guy that Clinton was, to be specific. For all his purported charisma, he’d rather shoot hoops and watch ESPN and play horse with his daughters than go to a party. He has an odd but useful gift for siphoning the tension out of things, including his own private life.

"I write this knowing that it will be seen by some as a parting valentine to the president. It isn’t meant as such. As a NEWSWEEK reporter and columnist for more years than I can count, I am paid to make judgments, some of them harsh. But I try to remember to step back and try to see the panorama, not just the particular. I hold no brief for any politician or persuasion, and never have. When Bush was president, I was widely accused of giving him too many breaks early on. Same with Obama now. But as I leave the magazine to write full time for the Huffington Post, I can say this about the president. It could have been worse. And if we aren’t careful, it probably will be.

Welcome to the HuffPost, Mr. Fineman -- and to frequent quotes here on ShrinkRap.

Ralph

"Rentboty" Rekers gets overturned

A Florida District Court of Appeals has overturned the state's ban on gay parent adoptions. This is long-overdue; many much more conservative states than Florida allow it, even those that have a ban on gay marriages.

Gov. Charlie Crist welcomed it, but the plaintiffs and the ACLU who represented them are hoping the state will appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court so they can get a higher level decision, which they assume will be in their favor and would do away with this odious law statewide.

A side note of interest. It was in the hearings for this trial that Dr. George Rekers was the highly paid expert witness who testified for retaining the three-decade old law, using discredited "evidence" and outmoded thinking more typical of right-wing, religious idealogy than of science. When asked why he spent so much taxpayer money on this witness, the District Attorney said he had trouble finding an expert who would testify for the state's defense, implying that others were intimidated. I think, rather, there were no other experts willing to prostitute themselves by presenting bogus science. Another side note of interest: the District Attorney lost his race for the Republican nomination for governor.

Whether Rekers' now-notorious journey to Europe with a paid "rentboy" had any influence on the judge as she deliberated the case would be merely speculation. Rekers' attempts to explain this were just as bogus as his testimony in court: he needed help with his luggage because of a bad back. I understand bad backs, but why go to a gay-oriented escort website and choose a baggage handler with impressive penis dimensions rather than big biceps? When the world laughed at that, he then said, "I deliberately spend time with sinners in order to lovingly try to help them." OK, but a paid trip to Europe and daily nude massages as the form of help? The world laughed even harder.

Perhaps the judge was a grown-up who could actually think for herself and would have made the same decision anyway. Her opinion stated that she could find "no rational basis" for the ban.

One more anti-gay law bites the dust. Anita Bryant*, are your paying attention?

Ralph

* In 1977 singer Anita Bryant led the anti-gay "Save Our Children" campaign that eliminated Miami/Dade County's anti-discrimination law. In that climate of mass homophobia, the Florida legislature passed the 1977 law that banned adoption by gay parents. This prompted a nationwide boycott of the Florida Citrus Commission that featured Anita Bryant in its advertising campaign; she became an icon of ridicule nationally, and it effectively ended her career as a popular singer. It is this same 1977 law that the Circuit Court overturned in 2008 and that has now been sustained on appeal.

Fair and Balanced #2

The funeral I went to this morning was of Nell, who was married to my father's younger brother. There was a connection, which I don't have quite straight, but it involved the Deal family. I have noted here before that Nathan Deal grew up in Sandersville.

Anyway, I've always had it in my mind that Nell was either related to, or very close friends with, Mrs. Deal, Nathan's mother. It turns out that she was not related but was close friends with a sister of Mrs. Deal, or something like that.

Anyway, it was ironic to be back there in the midst of all this controversy. My sister, who lives there, is as vehemently opposed to him as I am; but she tells me about her friend Hazel Metts, an otherwise liberal woman who plans to vote for him because she taught him in high school, and she just can't believe anything bad about him. This is the same woman who was not going to vote for Obama because she "didn't think he was very smart," but then denied that she had any racial prejudice.

Go figure. Who could possible think that Obama was not smart, unless you think all black people are inherently "not smart." My sister worked on her, kept trying to get her to watch the debates, but she had her mind made up.

Hazel taught me English in 10th grade; she was straight out of college at the time and pretty good, I thought at the time. Now she's pushing 90 and uses a walker and is getting 'forgetful.' She's liberal in theory and in general, but she votes against her own interests without realizing it. Signs of the times. Halfway there, but a long way to go.

Ralph

A confusion of tongues

"A confusion of tongues" = speaking different languages; talking past each other and not understanding what the other is saying.

John McCain almost had one of his infamous angry meltdowns in an exchange with a newsman who was questioning his adamant filibuster of the bill that would have eliminated DADT. McCain contended that the military does not actively pry into people's private lives to ferret out gays and lesbians. The newsman kept trying to confront him with examples of just that, especially the case of former Air Force Major Mike Almy, who with 13 years of exemplary service was discharged on no other evidence than emails to his partner obtained by his superiors from active prying into his emails. They didn't even pretend to offer any other evidence.

McCain kept insisting that the military doesn't do such things, and that if anybody has such evidence they should contact him. Major Almy is said to be "dumbfounded" at such assertions from Senator McCain, who chaired the hearings when he, Maj. Almy, testified just 6 months ago to that effect.

But here's where the confusion of tongues comes in -- and in this case it is probably a willful confusion, or obfuscation, on Senator McCain's part.

Read his words carefully: he just kept repeating: "it is not the policy," "the military does not have such a policy." Maj. Almy keeps saying: "But it happened to me." And McCain says: "There is no such policy."

Neither Maj. Almy or the news media reporting on it seems to get it. They're trying to resolve those two positions. They can coexist. It's not the policy, but it happens. That's the truth.

Now the real question is: if it is not the policy, how did they allow that as the only evidence in whatever proceeding led to Major Almy's discharge? That isn't right.

Meanwhile, senators played politics as usual yesterday and successfully filibustered the DADT-laden defense bill. That's a shame.

Ralph

"Fair amd balanced"

I drove down to my home town of Sandersville, GA this morning to attend the funeral of an elderly aunt. Driving into town, you couldn't avoid the big billboard advertising Fox News with various cable/directTV/etc. options.

In big bold letters, just under "Fox News" was their slogan: "Fair and Balanced."

I almost puked. And, if I had had a bucket of paint and could have flung it that high, the sign would have taken on a more colorful image. At least it didn't have pictures of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

Ralph

Deal's deal #4

Nathan Deal wants us to turn over the reins of state government to his stewardship, including the $17.9 billion dollar budget for fiscal year 2011.

And he is trying to shrug off the serious questions raised about his financial judgment and ethics raised both by his car salvage business and his personal loan guarantees to his daughter and son-in-law. His defense is to say that parents have a responsibility to help their children, and that's what he was doing; and now that their business has failed and they escaped into bankruptcy, he's going to be a good citizen and man up to the debt he guaranteed to the tune of $2.3 million that will come due in January 2011. Admirable, no? That's what he hopes voters will think.

The trouble is that the Deal family just keeps on forgetting to report certain things and wants us to overlook it as "inadvertant" and "unintended."

First, there was the matter of irregularities in his financial reporting as a congressman that was part of what got him into an ethics inquiry.

Then there was the fact that he had that $2.3 million debt that he did not reveal to the voters -- nor presumably to the party officials -- before they voted him in as the Republican nominee for governor.

Then there was the fact that the son-in-law's 2001 bankruptcy was not reported when he applied for a 2009 bankruptcy -- a clear violation, perhaps criminal, of the requirements to disclose.

And presumably he didn't disclose it when he applied for the bank loan in 2005 for the business. Or perhaps that's why the bank required Deal to co-sign the loans -- which would mean that Deal had to have known about the prior bankruptcy.

Which means that Deal's financial situation was even more precarious, as well as skidding into a gray area -- and he knew it -- when he put himself forth as the Republican nominee for governor.

And now -- if that's not enough to make him seem less than the upright fiscal conservative he claims to be -- comes the fact that he just happened to fail to disclose another debt in his campaign financial disclosure. His car salvage business also has outstanding loans of $2.85 million.

Now there are other matters that have Republican leaders worried, according to AJC political writer Jim Galloway. Although both Deal and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle have denied that Casey had any involvement in the loan deals, Cagle sits on the board of the bank that made some of the loans to the son-in-law. And note that Cagle was also the one in whose office Deal met with lawmakers to stop their effort to change the car salvage from a non-competitive monopoly for Deal's business to a contract bid process. And he was successful. I think Deal has previously referred to Casey as an old friend.

So there is good reason to think at the very least that the Deal family enjoyed special privileges and influence that got them loans that were not well secured. So what special privileges does he intend to call upon to help him repay a debt that he does not have assets to cover now?

All of this should raise serious questions in the mind of voters about both the financial wisdom and the ethics of Nathan Deal. More and more, I'm beginning to think it's not so much a matter of financial wisdom as it is playing the system of insider influence and special deals -- in other words: ethics, which got Deal in trouble in Washington even before he resigned to run for governor. He may be smart enough about money but was relying on his insider influence to get special deals that an ordinary citizen couldn't get. That's why he doesn't have to worry about the size of his debt.

To use a southern phrase that Nathan would understand: Methinks the Republicans bought a pig in a poke.

Let's hope the Democrats take full political advantage of these little inconveniences. When Deal talks about taking responsibility, ask him about the responsibility to tell the truth on loan applications and financial disclosure reports.

Ralph

Colin on Newt

Colin Power was on Meet the Press today. He was asked to comment on Newt Gingrich's latest attempt to smear President Obama, this time by insisting that Obama suffers from a "Kenyan anti-colonial worldview" that he got from his Kenyan father.

Powell dismissed it, saying that Gingrich is "simply pining for the spotlight," and he urged viewers not to fall for it or mistake it for a serious charge. He went on:

I think we have to be careful when we take things like Dinesh D'souza's book, which is the source for all this, and suggest that somehow the president of the United States is channeling his dead father through some Kenyan spirits. This doesn't make any sense. Mr. Gingrich does these things from time to time, with a big bold statement. He did it with [Sonia] Sotomayor, she's a reverse racist; he did it with Elena Kagan, she ought to be taken off the nomination for Supreme Court justice; and he does it occasionally to make news and also to stir up dust."

Take that, Newt. Your fellow Republican is telling you off.

And while you're at it, take your pal Nathan Deal and just go away. Thanks a bunch for endorsing this man, who a member of his own Republican party called "a corrupt bigot."

Ralph

Deal's deal #3

The week before the August primary race, Nathan Deal ran a TV ad in which he claimed that his slightly more moderate Republican opponent had voted "to give our tax dollars to Youth Pride, a group that promotes homosexuality among teenagers as young as thirteen."

It's bad enough that Deal sank to the depths of playing the anti-gay card to get votes (which he would have had anyway) but he did it by smearing a wonderful organization that provides social services and support for gay youth. And, in my opinion, he was endangering those kids by charging that the organization "promotes" homosexuality in young teens, which could have stirred up some crazy person to decide to blow up the place.

Nothing is further from the truth. As they responded at the time, Youth Pride promotes teens not committing suicide. It promotes teens not being thrown out on the streets by their bigoted parents. It provides a sanctuary for gay and questioning teens to feel accepted for whoever they are and promotes an atmosphere of safety to explore their questions. They do not proselytize or try to influence any one direction.

I know. Even though she had a completely supportive family when she came out as a lesbian, my granddaughter found Youth Pride to be a welcome social setting for meeting new friends, for having a social group where she fit in and didn't meet the slurs and bias she found in school, and where she could try out her new role as a gay teen. I have been to their fundraising open house and met some of the staff -- a great group of concerned and dedicated adult sponsors.

I was so enraged at Deal's tactics that, in addition to writing a letter to the AJC (which they chose not to print, although they did print other letters of protest), I also wrote to the Georgia Log Cabin Republicans, asking that they protest this from a candidate of their party.

An immediate response came from the president of the group, saying he agreed with the outrage, identified himself as a member of Youth Pride's board and its treasurer, and he said that the Log Cabin Republicans had decided not to denounce the ad, fearing that it would help Deal more than hurt him that close to the election. He was probably right.

However, this president of the gay Republican group said this: "If he wins the nomination, we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that this corrupt bigot does not set one foot in the governor's mansion." Wow !! Right on !! Understand this clearly. A group of Republicans -- gay Republicans, to be sure -- is going to work against the nominee of their own party because he smeared a worthy organization that supports gay teens.

Now, as Deal's campaign is getting under way, comes an AJC article saying that another member of the Youth Pride board (not the same man) has been using his IT skills to sabotage Deal on the internet. It's perfectly legal. Here's what he has done: when you do a google search, say of "Nathan Deal," the suggested links that come up first are always the ones that have gotten the most clicks recently. What he has done is simply flood the search engine with multiple hits on "Nathan Deal ethics" so that's what comes up first. If the searcher clicks on that choice, he then gets pages and pages of links to articles about Deal's ethical troubles. You can still get links to other articles; they just don't come up first.

Perfectly legal. At most, it falls in the realm of mild dirty tricks. But it certainly is nowhere near as dirty as Deal's trying to garner votes by a smear that endangered gay teens.

Ralph