Tell us how you really feel Booman
Booman tells us how he really feels about the meltdown over that anonymous Harwood comment I talked about yesterday. This should really be read in full to get the total context, but a couple of choice grafs.
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If you supported Obama during the primaries, you know who you are and this does not necessarily apply to you. For the rest of you, you spent the primaries either shilling for Clinton and telling us our guy was all talk and no show, or you spent them bitching that David Plouffe wouldn't respond to and obey your emailed wisdom. As soon as he won the presidency, you started bitching about his appointments. As soon as he became president, you started bitching about his messaging, his framing, his agenda, and his lack of deference to your opinion. I want to know where the point was in this process when Obama was supposed to conclude that you were his allies and that you were responsible for his victory. When was he supposed to conclude that he owed you something, or that you had any respect for him, or that you credited his good intentions, or that you understood the myriad responsibilities of the job might mean that your pet issues might have to wait six months, a year, or two years to get to the top of his agenda. [...]I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and what bothers me the most is the impatience. I'm not suggesting complacency or blind support but I don't think it's a cop-out to acknowledge that Obama inherited a shitload of problems between the election and when he took office that aren't so easy to solve. It sometimes seems that in the zeal to prove we're willing to hold our own accountable that the constant criticism ceases to be constructive and contributes to obstructing progress. I suppose everyone needs to find their own balance point but it is useful to remember that no one can wave a magic wand and instantly repair decades worth of damage.
Criticism is fine. But the sense of entitlement involved here is staggering. Ooh, some big, bad White House adviser defended the administration against one more heated attack. My feelings are hurt. Guess what? You should get over it.
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Labels: Activism, policy, President Obama
posted by Libby Spencer at 12:17 PM
5 Comments:
It was a good rant, and the self defeatism of many progressives is beyond annoying, it's dysfunctional. :)
It's all too easy to get caught up in the media frenzy I'm afraid. When I was forced off line for a while with the bursitis I noticed that most MSM stories these days need to age for a couple of days before the facts come out. And any headline that promises to tell you what something means, or what someone really thinks is probably not even worth reading.
I was down to just watching Rachel Maddow but then I lost reception of MSNBC for some reason and I haven't turned on the set in quite a while. :)
My conscience is clean on this Libby. And I'll put my credentials as a Democrat up against anyones.
President Obama is moving far to slowly for my tastes on several issues. He's the Commander in Chief. With one stroke of his pen he can stop this ridiculous don't ask don't tell which prevents Gay Americans from openly and honestly serving our nation in the military. He could definitly speed up getting our forces out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I know there is more than meets the eye to these issues and my intention is not to oversimplify. It appears to me though, that the President is trying harder to appease the right in the name of some twisted idea of "bipartisanship" rather than work to keep promises he made to those that voted for him.
Not much reason to turn on the tube these days. Especially when YOutube will give you the highlights of anything good.
Truth, maybe it's just cause I'm old and I've always been a delayed gratification kind of person, but I think he's done a lot in ten months, especially considering how f'ed up everything was when he took office. My head explodes just thinking about what he has to deal with on a daily basis. I can't imagine the pressure of being the one who has to decide what to do about it, knowing every decision will have a major impact on the world.
Sure he could abolish DADT with the stroke of the pen but then the newscycle would obsess about the reaction for weeks, derailing the focus on other parts of the agenda. Hard to strike a balance. And he did campaign on bi-partisanship. He never promised to fulfill the progressive's agenda.
As I say, I don't think blind support is good, but sometimes it feels to me like people criticize just to prove they're not blind loyalists. And blogs sometimes seem as bad as MSM on jumping on a story before all the facts are in.
But what do I know? We have to find our own balance.
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