This is an excellent piece. I liked his talking about how the kids were right and "The best and the Brightest" wrong about the Viet Nam war. Wharfrat and I were two of those kids.
And how many times have I posted this? And I emphasize "loyal opposition!"
I have also watched Obama's loyal opposition -- people like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair -- be proven right by events, again and again. So there are alternative paths, as there always are. But the White House has disdained them
All many of us have been saying for a long time.
I am a progressive first (50 years), a democrat second (50 years) and an Obama supporter third.
My Private Obama
by Robert Kuttner
commondreams.org
Now, who am I to second guess the cleverest politician to come along in decades? Well, I am old enough to remember the Vietnam era when the Best and the Brightest were just dead wrong, and the kids had a surer sense of American foreign policy than the experts. I have also watched Obama's loyal opposition -- people like Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Elizabeth Warren, Sheila Bair -- be proven right by events, again and again. So there are alternative paths, as there always are. But the White House has disdained them.
And I've noticed that it is the populists among Democratic elected officials who are best defended against defeat in November. That tells you something, too. Why should the project of rallying the common people against elites in Washington, on Wall Street, and in the media, be ceded to the far right? But that is what this White House is doing.
Progressives by nature are optimists. We believe that things could be better than they are, and that a decent society is worth fighting for. We're hopeful, sometimes bordering on wishful. A counsel of despair is not our thing. We tend to look for the best in people. That's why we keep playing Charlie Brown to Barack Obama's Lucy.
Obama was consistently underrated during the 2008 campaign. Nothing would make me happier than to say in six months that I was underrating him on July 4th, 2010, and to eat a big helping of crow.
But I reluctantly conclude that whatever progressives might desire in our private visions of who Obama could yet be, he is who he is. It is like watching a needless accident in slow motion. Without a drastic and abrupt course correction, the missed opportunities will continue to accumulate this summer and fall. The whole country, not just the progressive movement, will pay dearly.
Robert Kuttner's new book is A Presidency in Peril. He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos.
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