Obama's is the least cynical of the seven presidencies I've covered. It is a presidency that took effective action to prevent a depression, that has refused to engage in arrogant jingoism in its dealing with the rest of the world and--most important--spent its political capital on the most important piece of social legislation, health care reform, of the past 45 years.
That Rich would even implicitly compare Barack Obama, who has made a significant and very substantive intellectual effort to deal with every problem he's faced, with an adulterous golfer is facile to the point of slander...And so is the judgment that the country is "mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out." From where I sit, the country is facing very difficult problems--caused, in large part, by the right-wing extremism Rich seems to be crediting here--but it is in much better shape than it was a year ago. And the way ahead seems very clear to me: After a thirty year period during which the very notion of governance was ridiculed, we need to take the work of government seriously again. Barack Obama is doing precisely that.
You can disagree with Obama's decisions and his philosophy. You can argue that that he has tried to take on too much. You can argue that health care reform was the wrong priority in the midst of a deep recession. But you cannot gainsay the intensely serious nature of this presidency. And to give any credit to the notion that Obama is "spineless" requires a fundamental lack of knowledge about what he has been trying to accomplish this year...and about the limits of the possible.
I think Klein's point shouldn't be lost, at the same time, its hard for me to take his side on...well, anything, given that he's been subject to the same level of histrionics that he accuses Mr. Rich of engaging in.
Let's just say that if you're a reader -- or anyone else that doesn't rise to what Mr. Klein thinks is Mr. Klein's level of brilliance -- he gets a mite bit prickly.
That being said, my hope for the new year is that we all cut each other some slack.
I know, likely story.
