President Obama has become accustomed to strong attacks from conservatives in the media and in government, but now he is facing virulent attacks from his base, the Left.
Matt Taibbi in the latest issue of Rolling Stone claims that Obama has sold out to Wall Street. By making Timothy Geithner Secretary of the Treasury and Larry Summers head of the National Economic Council, Obama has turned to Wall Street insiders who put us into the mess, declares Taibbi.
NY Times columnist Paul Krugman and Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, both Nobel Prize winners in Economics, also are harshly critical of Obama for not having created massive jobs programs, worrying too much about Wall Street, and not enough about Main Street.
But beyond economics, there is strong criticism from the Left about the continuation of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lack of progress on gay rights, the endless battle over health care reform which is moving very slowly, and the continuation of Guantanamo Naval Base as a detention center for suspected terrorists.
At the same time, centrist Democrats feel that Obama has accomplished more than any President in his first year since the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
My feeling is just that–that Obama has accomplished a lot with a full plate of issues, and that impatience is the problem, expecting too much too soon. Ultimately, the fact that Obama is being attacked from the Right and the Left indicates he is in the center, and doing a pretty good job, much like FDR experiences bitter attacks from both ends of the political spectrum.
Thanks for this excellent summary of the political situation, Ron. I take it, however, that your acceptance of Obama’s record in office thus far means that you’re “The Centrist Professor” rather than “The Progressive Professor.”
I, for one, am pleased to see that Obama is going to give those Wall Street executives a swift kick in the pants today for using the taxpayer’s bailout money for their own benefit rather than in the public interest. If he had been more assertive about this and other issues, earlier in the year, he would not have disappointed or incurred the wrath of the left.
Rather than demonstrating a true centrist position on the issues, Obama seems to bounce back and forth between attempts to satisfy the left and then the right. Will he keep everybody happy? Probably not. But criticism from the left may be pushing him in that direction now, so for the time being, I’m going to enjoy it.