OBAMA MUST RESIGN

Nov. 2, 2010: The Day America Officially Became Hopeless

Let it not be said that Barack Obama did not achieve anything amazing in his first two years in office.  Somehow, incredibly, in that short time span, he made possible the revival of a conservative Republican party reeling from large-scale political freefall.  President Bush was historically unpopular, the war in Iraq was (and still is) a quagmire, and the only thing falling harder and faster than the G.O.P. was the economy--on the brink of total collapse thanks to a runaway, debt-driven system that amounted to a financial version of Russian roulette.

How can you have a record turnout of supporters turning out on a freezing day, ignoring their bladders in the cold just so they can get a glimpse of you and maybe shake your hand, while your predecessor sits--quiet, isolated, ridiculed--in ceremonial exile, and two years later find yourself right there, taking his place as the icon of rejection en vogue.  How does that happen?

Because Obama has spent most of his first two years in office mimicking the policies of his predecessor and pandering to his political enemies who have made it no secret they wish to erase him from the political power game.  As puzzling as yesterday's election and the resurgence of a seemingly has-been G.O.P. is, there are two pretty simple explanations: America's chronic conservatism, and Obama's reticence in attacking that conservatism--a symptom of his symptomatic conservatism. 

How in the world could anyone want more conservatism after 2000-2008 and larger post-1980 Reagan Era?  The social inequality, oppression, and malaise that come with conservative policies can't even be rationalized anymore by a booming economy based on a rejection of Soviet-style government regulation, not when the American economy fell apart precisely because it has been driven by subsidies, bailouts, and prohibition--all forms of government control of the economy--during the Reagan era.

So the American people elected Obama because they were tired of conservative policies that didn't work.  Obama then gave Americans a similar version of the same programs, they still don't work, and now Americans have voted again for the same party they voted against two years ago when they voted for Obama, presumably because they now want the G.O.P. to continue the same policies that don't work instead of Democrats.

This knot of self-destruction is a vicious spiral of societal collapse, and Obama the conservative is clearly clueless that he is calmly paddling at the front of a sinking boat.  When failure is systemic, no options work to correct and stabilize serious problems.  The available options simply do not correspond in type or proportion to the problems that need to be stabilized.  More mayonnaise doesn't help when the cupboard is bare.  Obama and the Democrats have been rejected by voters who want a return to the very politics responsible for the mess they blame Obama for--yet as crazy as that is, the voters are right, since his policies have not made a measurable departure from the failed policies of the conservative era he was presumably elected to usher the country out of.  The economy remains stagnant not simply because Obama has not had enough time to make it better but because it is just another version of trickle-down economics.  That explains why GM, the banks, and the insurance companies are rolling on while the non-rich remain mired in a state of growing despair and desperation.  Trickle down concentrates wealth at the top of the economic hierarchy, so that's where it stays.  And as long as some version of that policy remains intact, that's what you'll get.  You can have all the time in the world (which real people in the real world do not have) and your policies won't work if they are re-hashed versions of policies that have already been shown to fail.  Simply putting someone from the other party in the White House and switching from a foolish conservative to a smug conservative doesn't change anything.  Incredible, the American people associate Obama with an agenda that deviates too far from the policies that were in place before him, when a) one would think people would embrace such a mode of governing when it's obvious the old policies have failed and were never designed to work in the people's interest and b) when Obama's policies have failed not because they deviated too far from what came before but because they mimic them too closely and don't boldly move away from them.  The voters are both wrong about why Obama has failed and wrong to fault a significant departure from prevailing policies, because those policies are failures.  Hence the continued failure.

Taken as a whole, this is an ideological traffic jam: a dead end.  By now, Obama has no one to blame but himself for failing to fight back against those who have attacked him and alienating those who supported him because they did rightly want him to change the policies that have led us to this present state of failure.  In two short years, Obama has become the Louise Ridgeway of American politics, the doomed heiress in Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile" who, in the observant eyes of detective Hercule Poirot, "makes enemies of them all."  Obama, like America, is his own worst enemy, squandering a historical political moment and the opportunity of a lifetime simply because his own complacent, conservative motives have been in the way.  It is apparent from the way he acts, talks, and governs that everything is more or less OK from where he sits.  The only time he gets antagonist and goes on the offensive is when he's being interviewed by John Stewart.  He lectures and condescends to the nation's smartest and most politically active demographic, one without which he would have never gotten to be President.

Obama is another Bill Clinton, a conservative who wanted to be President and got what he wanted thanks to the progressive, non-rich population, and then ignored them, instead favoring the pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-police state policies of what came before him.  When things are bad and nothing ever changes, one thing is for certain: they've gone from bad to worse.  Clinton's daughter goes to Stanford and has a world-famous celebrity wedding while we're supposed to believe he, Obama, and the rest of the Democrats actually care about the people of this country and have some coherent, unified agenda other than to make sure as many of them can stay in office for as long as they can.  And they continue to operate this way even though they no longer can make credible claims that the conservative policies they effectively have supported in the Reagan era. 

Social oppression can't be worth economic prosperity when there is no economic prosperity.  But you can forget about any kind of intelligent conversation interested in explanations of how and why economies succeed or fail in this country, no matter how urgent the need for it is. As with yesterday, we'll get more of the same: "the economy goes in cycles," "the Lord will provide," "low taxes," and "deregulate" are beliefs and policies, not explanations.  You can't operate something you don't understand, and if you can't explain how it works, you don't understand it, no matter how many times you go back and forth between two conservative parties and their chronically conservative candidates.  That's the really troubling thing about Obama--by now he seems as clueless and conservative as the people who have supported him and rejected in two years because they have no interest in doing anything besides beating up on the punching bag of the day, a la Tea Party.

In early 1968, after a disturbingly narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary, when LBJ realized he had lost all support, he announced that he would not run for re-election.  Obama must do the same.  There can be no break from the conservative policies that are ruining this country as long as he remains the only option to those policies.  Two short years ago he had off-the-charts popularity, widespread support, and an opposing political party on the ropes.  Yet somehow, here we are today.

And that's just it: two years ago, who would have thought anyone could have done worse than the previous administration? Indeed, for Obama to have been bad enough at being president to make him even worse than what came before him is indeed quite amazing . . . especially for someone who's only been in office two years.