The way many Americans have treated Obama lately - calling him a national socialist, a socialist, or a non-citizen - well, it is just too much to accept. Americans, who somehow briefly contrived to appear brilliant and brave when they elected the radical man, now appear dim-writted and reactionary at their reluctance to support him. Kick the yes-we-can hard as you want, Obama is still great.
When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se. What do I mean by smart?
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Even his OFA leadership (essentially what was his volunteer army of campaigners) has turned on him with the prospect of his not pushing the public option. A lot will depend on what Obama does tonight when he addresses Congress concerning healthcare.
Obama may, himself, be a moderate conservative bordering on right leaning centrism on the world stage... But he has been making a post election triangulation run to the right to appease the Radical American Centrists that are not the least bit interested in solving the real underlying problems in the USA, IMHO. And these Radical American Centrists do not, in any way, reflect the major shift to the left in views of the American people on many issues.
There is a minority and very vocal opposition to Obama from the serious whack jobs (Teabaggers, Birthers, Deathers, etc.) but there is also a lot of push back that is merited based on real policies that are not being addressed adequately.
Is he better than Bush or any of the neoconservatives? You would have to measure that difference in light years.
Are his policies worth fighting for? No. Not as long as he continues to pander to the Beltway insider Villagers' wisDUMB that led us into an illegal invasion, ongoing economic disasters, etc. yada yada.
The healthcare battle is probably the most important issue - according to polling before, during and after election time - to the average American. If he runs to the right on this issue? He will have lost not just his base of supporters, but the left, right and center that supports real reform on the biggest social issue of our time.
(And yeah, I know... Here we are stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan and American voters are more concerned with their jobs, their money and their healthcare than people dying. Go figure, eh?)
That said, I don't see Obama as a radical. He's not even a liberal. He's a Democrat, a centrist-- much like Bill Clinton. Many of us on the left (who happily voted for him) are disturbed by his pandering to those carrying out these smear campaigns.
I'm not one to quote W, but there's something to be said for carrying out the mandate.
You are always so pessimistic about Obama, Todd. I told you he would win, and he did. And you always took the doom and gloom scenario to the finish-line.