Yesterday, for the first time ever, Barack Obama formally met face-to-face with the leader of a counterinsurgency that has placed his legacy squarely in its cross-hairs for much of its stunning ascension to the doorstep of power.
The way the nation's first black president treated the arch-peddler of the not-so-subtly racist "birther" conspiracy theory against him is far more indicative of the likely trajectory of the monumental White House transition between now and January 20 than whatever the partisan punditry of either side has had to say in their celebratory or grieving commentary since the wee hours of Wednesday morning. Above all, it was an expression of a mature humility which goes a long way to explaining Mr. Obama's persistently high approval ratings - something which a popularity-conscious Donald Trump was sure to take note of.
Trump was impressed enough by Obama's affable professionalism to even call him "a very good man" - not quite what you'd expect of someone who's spent months and months excoriating the president as essentially the worst America's ever had (though the two polar opposite assessments aren't necessarily mutually exclusive).
Beneath all the bluff and bluster, in fact, there's good reason for Obama to believe that the better aspects of his eight-year administration won't be reversed - not so much because it'd be too difficult even for a united GOP government to do so, but because Trump of all people has no desire to swim against the tide of history.
Obama has now accepted - if merely by necessity - that his opposition to Trump and Trumpism on behalf of Hillary was, in his own words, "on the wrong side of history." Or better yet, that history itself hasn't "ended" - i.e. its final course hasn't been irrevocably fixed for one last time - as it supposedly did back in 1989. He's doubtless reassessing both his own legacy and also the broader context of where the world stands as a whole, and it must comfort him to remember that even the unstoppable long-term currents guiding the human community's common destiny don't obviate any twist or turn along the way: such detours are simply part of the journey, because they expose and thereby release underappreciated tensions or contradictions that block the way to eventual Nirvana.
His ultimate decision to stay out of the Syrian civil war was a reflection of this fundamental judgment. On this particular issue, which is widely branded as his single greatest foreign policy failure, it's interesting to note that his dovish stance actually falls short of Trump's - even if you cynically note that the latter's perception of the whole issue is colored by an apparent infatuation with Vladimir Putin.
As he takes the reins of power, The Donald may yet find that a number of Obama's "failures" were actually primarily failures of messaging and spin (ironic for an administration that has been lambasted by its opponents as running a propaganda mill in cahoots with the liberal mainstream media). In the end, however much better (or worse) he actually fares than his predecessor in tackling the republic's most vexing problems - not to mention the most pressing crises in the world at large - Trump can at least take one cue from the community organizer whose social re-engineering agenda he's ambitiously attempting to replace with a massive reconstruction project: even if you don't get your way, you can still be a gracious loser without having to overcompensate with even bigger "wins", if even primarily for your image and your own ego. Potentially very valuable insight for someone who's gaudily steamrolled over obstacles his whole life, seizing even the most mind-blowing setbacks as occasions for bragging.
Friday, November 11, 2016
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
It's really so simple: Obama failed to deliver, period
In its most unadulterated and undiluted essence, the Trump tidal wave was fundamentally an uprising against the prevailing ideological and policy hegemony of the post-Cold War era. And you sure didn't have to be a Republican or conservative (let alone a Trump supporter) to notice that something was afoot.
Let's just focus on Barack Obama - the hope and change candidate of eight years ago who has long since become a proxy for "the way things have become" with "the establishment" - as a bellwether for that establishment's continuity and stability, as against the swelling anti-establishment revolt which culminated in last night's historic upset.
It didn't matter, in the end, that the outgoing first black president still enjoyed 50-plus approval ratings for virtually the entire homestretch of the campaign; of far more consequence was the fact - undeniable in hindsight - that his whole agenda had already been effectively frozen dead in its tracks by the onset of the Trump campaign in mid-2015. He downplayed this by trying to keep such fiascos as Syria out of the news as much as possible, and it saved his job polls, but apparently ultimately at the cost of cementing a widespread perception among those voters looking for decisive leadership from whichever party or candidate that he'd simply checked out of a presidency he just couldn't handle anymore.
Consider that just since Trump launched his raucous run for the White House last June 16 by essentially labeling Mexicans rapists and gang-bangers, Obama has suffered the following setbacks:
1. His signature amnesty for undocumented immigrants was blocked by an uncompliant court
2. His late push for the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal was stalled by a gridlocked Congress
3. His pick for Antonin Scalia's replacement as Supreme Court Justice - a moderate specifically tailored to suit enough Republican Senators - was unceremoniously stonewalled
4. His policy of replacing brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with a transitional authority that would end that country's catastrophic five-year civil war - and usher in a liberal democracy that would buffer it against ISIS and Al Qaeda - has been systematically eviscerated by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin
5. His signature domestic achievement - the Affordable Care Act - has fallen so far short of its original promises that his administration has quite conspicuously shelved the very term "Obamacare" from its public discourse
There are other failures and reverses Obama has suffered beside these, and some date back well before Trump bombastically stole the whole show less than 18 months ago. But in the world of politics, such a string of defeats finally comes back to bite you at the end of the day - no matter how much you manage the surface perception that you're still effective as a popularly mandated leader.
Politics is ultimately not about popularity - it's about the actual exercise and execution of power. Obama has failed to deliver, period. Long before Trump blew away the extension of Obama's legacy, the brash reality TV trash-talker had already emasculated the Oval Office - by simply capitalizing on the incumbent's existing longstanding weaknesses and inflexibilities.
What we have now is regime change - in Washington, of all places. But in fact Obama had lost much of the country long before November 8, 2016 - he'd already been a rump like Assad in Syria (in the American context of course) for a while.
If you blame it on his enemies, you miss the whole point: a US president, no less than other leaders and statesmen the world over, is primarily evaluated on the actual efficacy of his rule; on that, he's underwhelmed and so has finally been overwhelmed by his antithesis.
Let's just focus on Barack Obama - the hope and change candidate of eight years ago who has long since become a proxy for "the way things have become" with "the establishment" - as a bellwether for that establishment's continuity and stability, as against the swelling anti-establishment revolt which culminated in last night's historic upset.
It didn't matter, in the end, that the outgoing first black president still enjoyed 50-plus approval ratings for virtually the entire homestretch of the campaign; of far more consequence was the fact - undeniable in hindsight - that his whole agenda had already been effectively frozen dead in its tracks by the onset of the Trump campaign in mid-2015. He downplayed this by trying to keep such fiascos as Syria out of the news as much as possible, and it saved his job polls, but apparently ultimately at the cost of cementing a widespread perception among those voters looking for decisive leadership from whichever party or candidate that he'd simply checked out of a presidency he just couldn't handle anymore.
Consider that just since Trump launched his raucous run for the White House last June 16 by essentially labeling Mexicans rapists and gang-bangers, Obama has suffered the following setbacks:
1. His signature amnesty for undocumented immigrants was blocked by an uncompliant court
2. His late push for the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade deal was stalled by a gridlocked Congress
3. His pick for Antonin Scalia's replacement as Supreme Court Justice - a moderate specifically tailored to suit enough Republican Senators - was unceremoniously stonewalled
4. His policy of replacing brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad with a transitional authority that would end that country's catastrophic five-year civil war - and usher in a liberal democracy that would buffer it against ISIS and Al Qaeda - has been systematically eviscerated by Russian strongman Vladimir Putin
5. His signature domestic achievement - the Affordable Care Act - has fallen so far short of its original promises that his administration has quite conspicuously shelved the very term "Obamacare" from its public discourse
There are other failures and reverses Obama has suffered beside these, and some date back well before Trump bombastically stole the whole show less than 18 months ago. But in the world of politics, such a string of defeats finally comes back to bite you at the end of the day - no matter how much you manage the surface perception that you're still effective as a popularly mandated leader.
Politics is ultimately not about popularity - it's about the actual exercise and execution of power. Obama has failed to deliver, period. Long before Trump blew away the extension of Obama's legacy, the brash reality TV trash-talker had already emasculated the Oval Office - by simply capitalizing on the incumbent's existing longstanding weaknesses and inflexibilities.
What we have now is regime change - in Washington, of all places. But in fact Obama had lost much of the country long before November 8, 2016 - he'd already been a rump like Assad in Syria (in the American context of course) for a while.
If you blame it on his enemies, you miss the whole point: a US president, no less than other leaders and statesmen the world over, is primarily evaluated on the actual efficacy of his rule; on that, he's underwhelmed and so has finally been overwhelmed by his antithesis.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Downed by a big Weiner? If this is politics 2016, who needs reality TV?
Even the most outlandish political satire would have a tough time rivaling the surreal developments now unfolding in the final week of the presidential race.
Who could have thought that the long-running Anthony Weiner freak show would not only keep going on and on with one lurid exposé after another for months and years on end, but that it would finally have actual fallout in the realm of power and influence?
And to think that this is all because of a 15-year-old girl he allegedly sexted last winter, knowing it was a stomp on legal thin ice? If this is American politics in 2016, who still needs reality TV?
You gotta feel for Hillary and her now disgraced aide, Weiner's ex Huma Abedin: perhaps their hubbies' private-part escapades have finally caught up with them.
Granted, there's almost certainly still no evidence of malicious wrongdoing here, and criminal prosecution remains a stretch. But the negligence of what now looks to be a deliberate habit of intentionally forwarding sensitive emails to a political ally's unsecured account reeks to high heaven. If this were anyone else, you're talking a ban from any significant public service position for a probationary period plausibly at least five years - never mind the White House and nuclear football come January 20.
So has Hillary been shot by a big fat Weiner, so close to her lifelong prize? Having survived Bill's shenanigans with women for so long, how brutal a twist of fate it would be to suffer such a late-minute meltdown on account of a far more appropriately named philanderer who just so happened to be far too close to you to not spray your own name with his juicy dissipations.
Who could have thought that the long-running Anthony Weiner freak show would not only keep going on and on with one lurid exposé after another for months and years on end, but that it would finally have actual fallout in the realm of power and influence?
And to think that this is all because of a 15-year-old girl he allegedly sexted last winter, knowing it was a stomp on legal thin ice? If this is American politics in 2016, who still needs reality TV?
You gotta feel for Hillary and her now disgraced aide, Weiner's ex Huma Abedin: perhaps their hubbies' private-part escapades have finally caught up with them.
Granted, there's almost certainly still no evidence of malicious wrongdoing here, and criminal prosecution remains a stretch. But the negligence of what now looks to be a deliberate habit of intentionally forwarding sensitive emails to a political ally's unsecured account reeks to high heaven. If this were anyone else, you're talking a ban from any significant public service position for a probationary period plausibly at least five years - never mind the White House and nuclear football come January 20.
So has Hillary been shot by a big fat Weiner, so close to her lifelong prize? Having survived Bill's shenanigans with women for so long, how brutal a twist of fate it would be to suffer such a late-minute meltdown on account of a far more appropriately named philanderer who just so happened to be far too close to you to not spray your own name with his juicy dissipations.
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