....and the rabid partisanship can be silenced for a moment it's time to reflect on where we are and where we are going.
.......can we talk? About the future that is.
For starters, forget the punditry, especially those who would have it that all the party and Obama has to do is move "toward the center" to please the independents, or "get back in touch with the base" to improve turnout in the next election. The problem is much more serious and structural than that.
Obama blew a generational opportunity to be a transformational President, maybe it wouldn't have worked, but he really didn't even try. Barry Ritholtz said it better than I can in his blog today:
"The President was swept into office on a wave of Anti-Bush sentiment. The stock market was in freefall, credit was frozen, the recession already 13 months old. As Rahm Emanuel said, "Never waste a good crisis." A strong leader would have taken advantage of the moment, of the opportunity.
And what an opportunity it was: Over the prior 3 decades, the economy of the United States had been "financialized." We became much more involved in ‘financial engineering’ than any other more productive engineering. Along with this financialization came increased revenue for the biggest banks and investment houses; greater profits, influence, and power. A wave of deregulation swept over the sector, freeing the banks from meddling oversight.
Thus, as the finance sector got larger and more important, it was paradoxically under ever less scrutiny, supervision, and regulation. With that new found freedom from oversight, the banks promptly blew themselves, and the global economy, to smithereens.
This was the environment in which the President came into office. What did he do in this scenario?
• He appointed two of the architects of the crisis to major White House economic positions: Lawrence Summers as CEA Chair, and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.
• He made the enormous tactical error of focusing on Health Care Reform, while the banking crisis was still in full flower.
• He failed to marshall adequate resources to respond to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
The first item damned him to a mediocre economic team, one that failed to respond strongly to the banks that created the crisis. The second error earned him the enmity of the opposing party. The third error was political, and likely cost him the House, and possibly the Senate.
The great irony is that the man who ran on the campaign slogan of Change failed to deliver it in any meaningful way — at least, where the public wanted it — in getting the reckless runaway banks under control, and in stimulating the moribund, post-credit crisis economy.
I hasten to add, that from a political perspective, the President was a wimp. Had Al Gore been President from 2000-08 (and controlled Congress), the next GOP President would have flailed him for the recession and crisis bank relentlessly. Hell, the GOP still beats Jimmy Carter like a piñata. Once Obama took office, that was pretty much the last we heard of the Bush recession. The public actually forget who authorized TARP, who bailed out Citibank, BofA, AIG, Fannie Mae, Bear Stearns, etc.
This amounted to political suicide.
Critics have debated Obama’s hands off approach to passing National Romney-Care, his giving up (?!) the winning issue of partial Bush tax cut extensions. I am perplexed as to why he would not force a full confirmation battle over the charming midwestern Elizabeth Warren as new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair — Banks versus your grandma.
But as far as I am concerned, those are secondary political issues. To me, his presidency began its fatal downward spiral once he allowed Robert Rubin to determine his initial financial appointments. By passing over more pragmatic candidates not tied to banks and Wall Street, the president missed his opportunity to rise to greatness.
The opportunity existed to get the renegade banks under control — to reduce their leverage, their recklessness, and to get their hands out of the taxpayers pockets.
That opportunity was squandered, and Obama ended up as a defender of the banking status quo. It is where his presidency could have achieved lasting greatness, and instead was turned into just another elected official, who over promised and under delivered . . ."
Given the likely state of the economy two years from now I'd say Obama's chances of winning in 2012 are probably less than 50-50. I'm not saying you shouldn't work for his reelection, just that you should be looking further down the road to change your party into something that can truly address our serious economic issues. You must change the party before you can change the country. By that I mean making it a party that actually stands for something, and stands against what is undermining what remains of our democracy.
I believe the Party needs to step up and develop a platform, which may at first glance appear extreme. A few issues would include:
Election Reform - This should involve MAJOR reform of election financing and lobbyist activity. It is not enough to say we need to identify those who are buying our government, we need to stop them from doing so.
Reverse economic inequality - Serious changes in the tax rates, a one-time tax on the wealthy to decrease the budget, major changes in NAFTA and WTO.
Financial Reform – remove the choke hold that excessive financial activity has created on our economy and citizenry through more active regulation.
Cultural Re-organization - give the citizens something to believe in and a reason to work for a second chance for their children. Far sighted public works projects can be a first step in this program, along with real healthcare for everyone. Do something about the malignant degradation of people and violence in the media.
Yes, this will be criticized as a "radical leftist" agenda by the punditry, but given the decline in the country it is not only possible, it is necessary, and if the party took that approach it could lead to sweeping victories and changes in a very few years.