The real Bush legacy

By Libby

I already posted on Obama and faith-based funding at Newshoggers this morning. And I posted a second installement of Wesley Clark is right at DetNews so let me flag for you here, a brilliant op-ed at the Boston Globe. Andrew Bacevich deconstructs the Bush legacy and summarizes it in a depressingly concise bullet list, noting it won't be so easy to just toss what Bush has wrought out with yesterday's trash when the next president takes office. Click over for the list but here's the money quote for me.

By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration's entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.

This is a stiff test, not the work of a speech or two, but of an entire campaign. Whether or not Obama passes the test will determine his fitness for the presidency.

That is indeed the test and one which we can't afford as a country to see him fail at. Watching the primaries unfold, I thought this was Obama's plan, which is why I voted for him in the first place. It's not that I expected him to take up the progressive's banner and lead us into a liberal uptopia. It's a given that any candidate is going to tack to the perceived center once they hit the general election, but I expected him to maintain his willingness to stand up to the fake media narratives and force the debate into more meaningful direction. Instead he seems to be allowing himself to be buffeted by the ill winds of media driven GOP cheerleading into sailing too far to the right of center.

Moving more to the center is fine and probably necessary but the center is not where the media and their Republican overlords say it is, which is apparent to even the most low info voters outside of the beltway. But it's early yet, and Obama is clearly learning the ropes as he goes. One can only hope that Obama will notice quickly that the conventionally wise insiders he seems to listening to now have failed to deliver the White House in too many cycles because they remained deaf and blind to public sentiment and will start listening to his own gut instincts again instead of allowing entrenched, focus-group besotted consultants to chart his course.