Because the President is Neither King Nor Daddy

I just finished watching "By the People: the Election of Barack Obama," and recommend it highly to every liberal who thinks we can't reach our goals because President Obama hasn't made them his priorities.

Remember "The Lion King?" The best review I read of it made the point that the story is profoundly un-democratic. Its portrayal of a population believing itself helpless to overthrow an oppressive dictator, patiently waiting for rescue to arrive in the form of a Daddy/King, was the perfect story for the Smirky/Darth maladministration ruling by fear.

We elected Barack Obama because we wanted a president. Not a king. Not a daddy. A public servant.

We got one who is too indebted to corporate interests. One who is too cautious and careful to embrace bold action. One who is too enamored of cooperation and bipartisanship to avoid the traps set by repugs and blue dogs and traitors.

Via Ken at Down with Tyranny, Drew Westen explains what we're up against.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry).

SNIP

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

SNIP

The problem with the president's strategic team is that they don't understand the difference between compromising on policy and compromising on core values. When it comes to policies, listen all you want to the Stones: "You can't always get what you want" (although it would be nice if the administration tried sometime). But on issues of principle -- like allowing regressive abortion amendments to be tacked onto a health care reform bill -- get some stones. Make your case to the American people, make it evocatively, and draw the line in the sand. That's how you earn people's respect. That's the only thing that will bring Independents back.

SNIP

People in the center will follow if you speak to their values, address their ambivalence (because by definition, on a wide range of issues, they're torn between the right and left), and act on what you believe. FDR did it. LBJ did it. Reagan did it. Even George W. Bush did it, although I wish he hadn't.

But you have to believe something.

I don't honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn't figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he's not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he's going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they're seeing right now is "liberalism," and they don't like what they see. I don't, either.

What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November.

Which is why it is up to us to make the president we elected do the right, liberal thing.

Vacation's over, kids; now the real work begins.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....