Jon, Westen’s article certainly sums my fears regarding the Obama presidency. My most optimistic view at this point is that Obama, familiar with America’s tradition of power-politics-by-assassination is not going all “float like a butterfly” and leaving out the part about “sting like a bee.” Rather, I hope he entered the ring in full rope-a-dope mode, shaking off hits from the military, the Wall Street corporatocracy, the right wing fundamentalists and the just plain racists. The progressive base that elected him wants ideological purity, but we really don’t need another martyr.

The arc of Obama’s political career, informed by Alinsky’s pragmatic approach to organizing the powerless to help themselves, has reached its nadir just as he’s achieved a moment of victory in the struggle for “health care reform.” We on the left tend to forget that Obama never claimed to be a socialist. We also too often think we have a monopoly on truth, and this attitude results in a “doctrinaire, humorless and intellectually constipated” approach to policy analysis.

Obama could have ended torture and prosecuted the Americans responsible for it. He could have pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He could have come down hard without compromise on the side of a public option in the health care struggle. He could have begun prosecution of all the Wall Street miscreants instead of seeking their counsel and seemingly rewarding their failures.

He could have withdrawn support for Israel and supported nation building in Palestine, defended the Palestinians in the face of Israeli aggression, and set a whole new course for middle east policy. He could have reshaped immigration policies to reflect humane treatment of the refugees from poverty who daily cross our souther border.

He could have shed the cloak of “executive privilege” and made his administration the first since world war two to work in the sunlight of public scrutiny.

Many of us wish he had done some or all of these things. I suspect he has a very clear view of what the consequences would be if he took the moral high ground on these and other issues.

I’m hoping that his laser focus on pragmatic politics will in 2024 turn to supporting the left and re-electing a majority in both houses of congress. I wonder how he can do that at this point.

Leadership, Obama Style and the Looming Losses in 2024: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values and the Quest for the Lowest Denominator

I found it pertinent and quite directly to the point(s).

Like you, I find it hard to let go of my belief in the Obi-wan. I do feel your pain. Can that brief moment of hope end up just another Obamination? One more spasm of excessive exuberance. Check out Frank Rich’s column in today’s NY Times. I think you two are channelling the the same muse. How’s the kitchen floor holding up?

I’m fighting off a sense of despair that we might not be able to learn fast enough.

I constantly ask myself: “Would you rather be right or effective?” (with the answer fixed on effective because being “right” without any effect is too much like performance art).

I do think there’s a lot in your post that is “right” and it is a nice performance. I won’t get the “Insane Clown Posse” image out of my head anytime soon.

I’m rooting for “enlightenment” on some very critical issues:
effective governance, political discourse (by and for people with the power to effect change), an end to corruption in media and governance, and rational resource management for the benefit of my kids and their kids…