Here's some of DU'ers Problems with Obama "Acting" as President

Obama is beginning to realize, though, that "being president is hard work," as Bush II memorably said. Obama said nearly the same thing at the press conference. I think his confusion or hesitancy lies in who it is that needs to be persuaded.

He's wasted a great deal of time trying to win over Republicans in Congress. Where did that get him? Now, it seems he is trying to work with and persuade the powerful. ("My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks"). Is that what he's saying to BP execs behind closed doors?

(COMMENTER ON THIS POST)

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http://www.openleft.com/diary/18910/lakoff-hits-the-nail-on-the-head-re-obamabut-misses-the-heart


Lakoff hits the nail on the head re Obama--but misses the heart]by: Paul Rosenberg
Sun May 30, 2010 at 10:00


You've been through all of F. Fitzgerald's James Baldwin's books
You're very well read, it's well known.
But something is happening here, and you don't know what it is,
Do you, Mr. Jones?


President Obama is not a psychopath, unlike George Bush. And yet he seems to sleepwalk like one. There is a profound disconnect between the man he hints at being around the edges--the man he pretended to be during the campaign--and the things he does day in, day out. Friday, George Lakoff posted a diary that's most illuminating, both for what it accurately says, and for what it mistakenly assumes about Obama. The title, "Obama's Missing Moral Narrative", is spot on. So, too is the basic message: that Obama needs to fiercely embrace the moral narrative that he seemed to invoke when he was a candidate. But having so sagely diagnosed the what of Obama's failing, I'm afraid that Lakoff has unfortunately mis-dignosed the why.

David Kaib did a quick hit on Lakoff's diay, and commentator Vlaszlo linked to a May 2008 piece by Adolph Reed (black activist academic) in the Progressive magazine, arguing that Obama's always been a neo-liberal, rather than a progressive, at least since he began running for office. This rings increasingly true for me. The longer I see him in action, the harder it is for me to believe his post-election actions are anything but expressions of his "true self", even if there is also a piece of his true self that doesn't quit fit and that spills over sometimes.

Lakoff's piece starts slowly with some obvious, but sharply accurate observations:

READ MORE at........

How come 95% of the country doesn't know who he is.

the fact that they don't know who researchers are isn't surprising.

(Though considering his book sales, I'd put the number considerably less than 95%).

So the illiterate can understand his brilliance? That's what he says Obama should do.

I would bet over 80% of Democrats don't know who Lakoff is. I was being generous with that 95% figure.

Not sure why illiterati being unfamiliar with his (or any of his fellow researchers') work somehow discredits it.

I know you don't like it, because it often shines a disparaging light on your leader and his advisers- but the thing with scientific principles is that they're objective and apply to anyone.

Drew Westen probably framed it best:



Republicans on the other hand use these principles far more consistently and effectively. One of the reasons why- despite being the most pathetic and dishonest bunch to ever hold or run for office - they're poised to take the majority back.

Ifn' he's so good and stuff?

I always thought he was a trumped up piece of "Neo-Lib" TALK...IMHO....

But, since our Liberal Media is not funded anymore...we are sadly left to hang on Lakoff's every word.

I like the Commenter on FDL that I posted in my opening sentence.

There's SOMETHING WRONG about the way or Dem Party is doing things. Whether it's hiring Lakoff or caving on Ideals...we have much that needs to be held accountable.

That would be a good place to start.

how come?

. . . .I made sure all the right people liked me. At night I did the checklist in my mind. Am I cool with Ben Hillard? Am I cool with Dr. Josephson? Am I cool with all the people who can help me? Am I cool with all the people who can hurt me? Nobody thought I was weak or a loser. There was nobody I was offending. Nobody I loved. That game, Ethan."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DLd5UHYix4&feature=related


I stumbled upon the last half hour or so of this movie sevral years ago. I had no clue what was going on, what the story line was, nothing. I watched not knowing what I was watching, and promptly forgot it until Friday morning when someone mentioned "a movie with Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding Jr." and described it as "one of the best examinations of the human mind I've ever seen." Even he didn't know the name of it, and I didn't know anything at all about it beyond vague, half-remembered snippets.

So I did the google thing and found this clip.


"But guess what. You taught me how to live outside of the game."





Tansy Gold, who has never been very good at the game herself.

all the rest is where it goes. It's a NEW WORLD...and GAMESMANSHIP RULES!

So much for the rest of us who don't have "PLAYERS" in the field, on the Team...on the CHESSBOARD, dealing the CARDS in POKER! ("WE" are done for ....who don't have those skills...left out, KAPUT...USELESS...!

I think given Obama's background...that's how he learned to live his life given what was thrown at him.

But, I think we might want to look at our own lives...and wonder if Obama is not including the REST of US...in some psychodrama that was HIS LIFE...that might not be applicable...except from his own perspective which had no relevance to why he was elected on "Hope and Change" by the DEMOCRATIC PARTY who goes back to Roosevelt Roots!

If he didn't get it...then is it OUR FAULT for VOTING FOR HIM? :shrug:

The movie quote was taken out of context because I don't know what the context is. I only saw the last part of the movie to begin with. and therefore had no context myself.

But when I went to find it Friday afternoon and stumbled upon that clip, the segment struck a chord in me. It seemed then -- and of course more so today -- to describe Obama first, but then also to describe our desire as the electorate to play the game, to succeed, to win.

However, this issue of competition and of winning also infects the right wing ideology. I wondered, during a conversation yesterday with the same person who brought up the movie "Instinct," why the right is so militaristic, and of course it's because they need winners and losers. No ambiguity, no uncertainty, a clear determination of who is "right" and who is "wrong." (See Altemeyer "The Authoritarians" and Jost, et al, "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/ConsevatismAsMotivatedSocialCognition.pdf) This also explains (imho) why they don't want gays in the military. It has nothing to do with ability or vulnerability to blackmail or issues of potential rape (goddess knows we have enough of that already with the straights in the military!). It's about uncertainty and ambiguity and grey areas where up isn't exactly up and down isn't quite down and "yes sir!" doesn't really apply the way it sort of used to.

If we on the left -- and especially on the farther left -- attempt to fit our belief system into this kind of polarized mold, it doesn't fit. We try to honor the troops while protesting the war but Buffy told us 40 years ago that without the troops "all this killing can't go on."

My field is sociology, not psychology, so I don't presume to speak with any authority on this, but I think we'd all be stupid if we didn't expect Obama to be more than a little bit of a game player. He had to be in order to succeed. So did Bill Clinton. There are a lot of similarities to their backgrounds, which makes it not at all surprising that there are similarities in the way they play the political game.

And they definitely are players.

But I don't think Obama learned to live outside the game, even though he started outside it. I think he was very sharply focused, very much like Cuba Gooding's character, on playing the game by its rules, not his.

I don't think Jimmy Carter was, and I think that's why he wasn't considered a success by the party. Maybe it was his background in engineering which anchored him to a different reality that was less competition, less gamesmanship, more sense of simply doing what needed to be done rather than playing games that might or might not get the job done even if you "won." And I know that sentence is a syntactical nightmare but I hope I got the point across.

But one who definitely did NOT play the game was FDR, or at least imho. He was "a traitor to his class" and seemed to have a sense more of right and wrong rather than win and lose, if that makes sense. And yet he was thrust into one of the biggest games on a global scale of win or lose and managed to win. So looking back to FDR's strategy as a blueprint for Obama presents a stark contrast. Not to mention that the world -- and the game -- has changed in the past 70+ years.

So ultimately, I think it's difficult to make the comparisons too tightly, because there are so many other factors. But I do think Obama sees the game as a contest between himself and All The Others, where he has to win in order to succeed and he can only win by playing by The Others' rules. He doesn't know how to make his own.

And I think maybe that was the mistake we the electorate made -- not that we had much choice -- when we allowed ourselves to believe, even if only for the few seconds it took to cast our vote, that he stood for change. We should have known, even though most of us couldn't have known, that in order for Obama to get where he was, he had to be a game player. And game players play by the rules, they don't change them.



Tansy Gold

that he now tiptoes around a national crisis.

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and even though I think "BP FIASCO" might be his "Wake Up Call"...he still seems to be in the FUGUE of the RIGHT ...too much for my taste as a voter for him. :shrug:

I don't think he knows he's afraid, and I don't think he knows he's tiptoeing. He thinks he's playing the game and playing it well. So well, in fact, that he thinks he's already won.

Someday he may wake up and realize that all the people who like him are the people who are as blind to the truth as he is. And that they've lost.


Dylan Ratigan did a wonderful piece on them on TYT. The video is here on DU, an interview with Carol Tavris, author of "Mistakes were made, but not by me." Sadly, those who most need to learn that lesson automatically assume it doesn't apply to them.

Even more sadly, it applies to all of us.




Tansy Gold

I'm not upset that President Obama has tried to be the President for the whole US of A. I believe, unlike the Republicans, the Democratic party in this country would have jumped at the chance to be included in the process during the previous administration. It's a shame the right has painted itself into such a small minded corner. I believe we were correct in initially trying to include the right in the political process, but now - pfft, these 'people' have shown themselves to be slime. They don't want to be included like we did, they want complete power over those they see as beneath them, and that's us - anyone with an open mind. Fuck 'em. I don't want a Republican anywhere near ANY meaningful legislation at this point.

of what came before with Eight Years of Bush and Cheney.

I understand what you say...but I also have to point out that OBAMA got elected after 12 YEARS of HARD WORK by DEM ACTIVISTS who supported CLINTON against the Agregious Ken Starr WITCH HUNT...then STOLEN ELECTION of 2000/2004 and the CORRUPT VOTING MACHINES!

We DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS spent over 12 YEARS on FALSE CLINTON IMPEACHMENT/BUSH STOLEN ELECTION/ILLEGAL IRAQ WAR and HOUSING BUBBLE ALONE! WE FOUGHT TO GET CHENEY'S ENERGY POLICY COLLUSION WITH BIG OIL/GAS to be EXPOSED... WE FOUGHT TO SAVE THE WHALES/DOLPHINS,POLAR BEARS AND all OUR CREATURES FROM GLOBAL DEVASTATION ...along with our NATIONAL PARKS...for DECADES!

DAMN IT! THE REPUGS WON! THEY WON!


ALONE...WE FOUGHT THIS ...!

Now.. Obama seems to think we must "Make Peace" with our ENEMY!

sorry.

Some other people wanted him to be and projected that onto him. I never saw him as Dennis Kucinich or Alan Grayson. I saw him as slightly to the left of Bill Clinton.

Did anyone not read the political compass reports during the campaign?
"While Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad. Despite all this, some angry emailers tell us that Obama is a dangerous socialist who belongs on the extreme left of our chart. In an apparently close race, genuine leftists McKinney and Nader may attract sufficient votes from Obama to deliver McCain to the Oval Office." http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008

We had a primary and he won it. That is what we got. As far as empathy goes, which President has shown empathy in the past? Who do people want him to be like? An actor? Emotional fakery helped W. but it hurt us.

Obama as Bush II..or Bush Light...or Clinton II/DLC.

He ran on "HOPE FOR CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN." If he'd run on "Status Quo" or "Clinton II" or "KENNEDY I...before ASSASSINATION" then we might have had a clue.

So...You think those of us who believed in the "CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN....I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU...I WILL NOT FORGET YOU" just read Obama's every word in that Campaign WRONG?

:shrug: We were just Gullible or Idiots?

For the world, he is a moderate conservative. I hate hyperbole. My mother calls him a socialist and some here call him Bush light. He is neither. Change was change from Bush. From the neo conservative right to the center left. Has Obama been centrist at times? Sure, he has. But none of it surprises me. After all, he voted for FISA. And he was somehow a progressive? I wouldn't call some on the left gullible I would call them wishful thinkers. I mean, in most of the debates between Hillary and Obama there were minor disagreements. And Hillary voted for the Iraq War, Obama opposed it as a state Senator. Other then that, there was really not a whole lot of difference. I voted for Obama in the primaries because Hillary seemed like she thought she was entitled to the job and a bit arrogant about it all. And Obama seemed to not fit that. But his post partisan manner, his speech in 2004 (we are not red states or blue states, we are the United States), none of that told me he was an ultra progressive. Did it for you?

And not what Obama ever actually referred to.

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT THIS...I WILL FIGHT FOR YOU!"

I can find you "You Tube Links" if you don't believe what we who supported him heard from every STUMP SPEECH the man GAVE after he won the nomination. :eyes:

of the dismissal techniques more fitting to conservatives. At least you don't accuse leftists who were suckered of "whining", but the odor still lingers.

Yes, if people were really paying attention, they couldn't have missed that he was a slightly right-of-center ultramoderate corporatist with a habitual bent for being on both sides of every issue he couldn't outrightly duck, with a consistent use of religion in the public sphere, and blithe willingness to let subordinates take the blame and stick their necks out. What we were told OVER AND OVER AGAIN was that he was just playing chess and positioning himself for that glorious day when he would drop the guise and vault forth as the great populist hero.

Yes, he made it quite clear that he would escalate the Afghani stupidity, but he still repeatedly played the "against the war" chirping to sucker the doe-eyed peaceniks. Personally, I don't consider that largely successful duping to be a great moral achievement. He played environmentalist, and he's been a mixed bag on that count, but he's pretty consistent about not letting frivolities like that EVER get in the way of business.

He keened over and over about the evils of the old ways of playing politics, and was the Pied Piper of the new kind of honorable dealings, yet he's more of a politician than the average bear, and it shows. It has disillusioned many. It was obvious to many of us, and blaming the innocent may be a fine way of relieving one of one's complicity with this, but it's a grievous disservice to those who cared, and it's foolhardy: legions of the newly enthused have become embittered and feckless. Do we really need to be told that the young aren't going to turn out in the mid-terms? (I also don't necessarily think we're going to get our asses kicked, either, but it's anybody's game right now.)

Any of us who warned about the cynical machine politics and corporatist leanings were shrieked into attempted social deportation by those who would hear nothing against the newfound hero, and that contributed to so many never getting a chance to really hear anything else. Apologists constantly bellyache that he so obviously portrayed himself as a non-lefty that it's their own fault for not paying attention. That's just a self-serving load of bilge water to once again attempt to shout and humiliate dissenters into silence. It just ain't true; when it worked to his advantage, he was for a public option and all sorts of things.

If one was paying attention, one could see this, and one could see it more obviously in the general election, when candidates always swing toward the center.

This tack is nothing short of tacky.

It was not that progressive. I looked at his proposals on his website too. Not that progressive. No one needs to be silenced. People can be disappointed. But people see many times what they want to see. Sestak himself is playing outsider and fixer in his campaign. Is he an ulta progressive? Hardly. But all politicians do that to get elected. People claim to hate insiders. So what do politicians do? They do what gets them elected. Obama played hardball to once get someone out of his Senate race who did not have enough signatures. He was no dummy. Also, Obama was pretty new on the scene, so he had an easy time of playing outsider. I don't know, I just never saw him as what many see him but it also did not bother me. Who were the most adept and astute politicians at the end of the primaries? Obama and Hillary.

He made endless hay out of "being against the Iraq War", when he made precisely ONE speech against it before the vote, and that was one that he didn't even bother to have videotaped or even completely audio taped. The ad he ran so aggressively was a RERECORDING of his spoken text, with images let to make people believe he was out in front on this. Like so many things, he was NOT.

Being a moistened-fingered maneuverer is sort of de rigeur in politics, and making that a litmus test would have the gutters run red, but when one righteously claims to be heroic and "new", it is justifiable grounds for criticism.

There's a huge difference in your statement that you did your homework and pored over the reality of his actions and the claim that HE REPRESENTED HIMSELF ACCURATELY. You actually disprove your point and rather handily buttress mine: what he allowed himself to be characterized as and what he actually was were rather different things.

Here's a man who's PROUD to claim that he is a blank slate upon whom people write their dreams; to me, that's something one should be embarrassed about. That's an admission of being a deliberate chameleon to gain personal power.

Let me be clear: I don't think he's a rotter or a skunk, but he's played fast-and-loose with many people's dreams and emotions, and he bears much of the blame. He hides behind Congress, doesn't get out in front and get specific, has his arm-twister Rahm hammer people toward the right, and still has this infuriating Clintonian (Bill, that is) need to be loved by everyone.

The very fact that you claim having gone into the unpublicized policy actions of the man as "proof" that he represented himself properly is wholly ridiculous. You know full well that most people don't do that, and when their willing collusion and slipperiness allow them to toy with the aspirations of the disenfranchised, it gets progressively uglier to justify such legerdemain.

And Obama presented himself above partisanship, post partisanship. Huge difference between that and an ultra progressive.

Is there any sense of responsibility here at all?

I haven't bellyached about not seeing Obama for the ultramoderate, corporatist constantly-campaigning legislator that he is, but THAT'S because I listened, read the record and paid attention. I HAVE complained about the deliberate suckering of leftists, environmentalists, peaceniks and other like-minded souls.

If a person smilingly takes support of those who state flat-out that it's because of policies that the candidate knows full well aren't his, then HE is to blame, and his supporters deserve some grief as well.

Those who spoke out about this during the primaries were slagged and hammered as villainous dead-enders, racists, idiots and all sorts of other fine dismissals. There was a cynical blind eye cast by many partisans, and there was literal collusion to block legitimate inquiry. Over and over we've been hectored that he will turn and fight and be a champion of the little guy, and the pissy "you weren't paying attention" schtick is just another peer-pressuring shut-down tactic of those whose egos are so wrapped up in protecting their hero that the very well-being of the nation and its weakest simply simply don't matter.

He played games. Even if it's the duty of each and every voter to spend the extreme amounts of time researching that political nuts like we do, it's still DECEPTION to feign allegiance with those who think you give a damn.

Somehow, to many, this man is a god, to whom we owe EVERYTHING. That is obscene. He owes us; the term is "public servant", and he went out of his way to flatter himself in our eyes as someone truly special and concerned with the well-being of the disenfranchised. Sneering at those who took him at his word or took his supporters at their word when HE knew quite well what they were saying is an insult to the schnooked. There's a "ha ha" jig of superiority that is more befitting conservatives than pluralists, and even the most blinkered and stalwart support must concede the false apprehensions about important progressive policies that were used as nothing more than bargaining chips.

At least with ideologues you know what they stand for; what little I see this administration standing for is some cowering collusion with HUGE MONEY to the neglect of everything else. Gestures toward health care, environmentalism, decency in foreign policy and a host of other issues are made only to the degree that they bolster powerful corporate interests.

Blame the victim; it's a fine old game.

and you gotta fight with ONE GANG on the SIDE 'O THE STREET...against the OTHER to ever have credibility so that the BULLIES from ONE SIDE OR THE OTHER ....DON'T BEAT THE SHIT OUTTA YOU!

OBAMA hasn't learned it YET...but I have huge hopes that he will. That Obama is still the "Little Tyke" who will LEARN...and LEARN...and LEARN from his "Mis-steps and Mis-Speaks" along the way.

I still have faith that he and Michelle will "TAME HIM!"

I DO!

Hillary had a finger on it when she made her comment about the heavens opening up choirs of angels singing. It continued after the election when folkds were sobbing in that Chicago park abouut how Obama was going to pay their bills, etc.

Somebody on the team should have have put the kibosh on that then and there--made it abundantly clear that Obama is a human being with a tough job. He has a life that includes a young wife and young children, he has a personality and flaws just like the rest of us.

Then he could proceed to do the job he has done, make the changes he has made and intends to make, without having the drawback of unrealistic expecations.

have been elected, not in the primary and not in the GE.

Hillary was portrayed as the insider, Obama as the outsider. And if he didn't establish that image himself, he certainly allowed it to be built up around his candidacy. Building his campaign on the whole issue of change was enough. Not just a change from booosh, but a change from EVERYTHING. Not a mild alteration or same policies, different face. The mantra was change, unlimited change, absolute change.

But the change was, in fact, very minor. Obama's not a psychopath -- and I would only put booosh in the sociopath category, not psychopath -- but he's not a changer. He's had to play the game too long and too well and too hard to scrap the rule book at this stage. I don't think he's capable of doing it.




Tansy Gold, who lives with an umpire

and so he is presiding on the death of the economy, the death of the gulf of Mexico, the death of health care reform, the death of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and ultimately, the death of civilization.

This is not the Change we were sold on.

They have meaning, and we should not forget that.

:yourock:




TG

:blush:

and back at ya!

it was the centerpiece of his campaign

Lakoff to make his point.

Lakoff is the perfect example of what is wrong with neo-democrats: quantifying and modeling empathy. If the message does not come from the heart, it is phony.

This said, 20 years of new Democrats, personal responsibility and caring less about people than money has made a lot of damage among Democrats who look disconnected.

But there is no question that Democrats (all of them or nearly) behave the way he describes, but the problem is that the good ones (like Obama) feel they have to follow the mold or they will be excoriated by the media).

by calling Obama too conservative. It's the cheap applause line in the world of left-commentary.
Lakoff's piece was as trivial as most of what he writes and its clear that neither Lakoff nor Rosenberg really get Obama.