Obama’s Halfway House
NEW YORK — I had very high hopes for Barack Obama. I still do. He’s smart, curious, informed — and he has a sense of humor, if only he’d display it more. But he inherited a nation in a funk and, one year into his presidency, he’s not found a way to lift the mood. Americans feel mired.
At a fundamental level, that funk is about a power shift. The United States is not what it was. It got attacked and the response has proved draining in blood and treasure. Anger accumulated, frustrations and debt grew. America’s 20th-century role is unraveling, albeit slowly, but its 21st-century role is not yet born.
Like it or not, we are witnessing the relative decline of the West. It’s going to be a long, slow movie but I don’t think the plot is going to reverse itself.
This transition prompts a couple of reactions. One is “To heck with the world.” Many Republicans (and Sarah Palin comes to mind) are in this my-way-or-the-highway place. The other is: Let’s adjust to the new reality through outreach and a new modesty. Obama is somewhere in that zone.
The thing is the president needs some results. I see him caught in a kind of halfway house. His gut tells him the world has changed and demands new policies but Washington politics keep him stuck in the conventional. His first year on the world stage has offered innovative speeches but largely unoriginal policy.
I suspect he’s not yet confident enough to have the courage of his convictions. Or perhaps he just needs more grown-ups in the White House. The transition from a very successful campaign to power is still a work in progress. If I get another mass e-mailing from the White House about what Obama’s “movement” needs next, the response will be ugly. That’s not how you govern.
The issue is change. Obama has spoken of “a new foundation.” It’s needed within and without, where the vital centers of growth have shifted to China, India, Brazil. But change is not about speeches. It’s about conviction and courage. I don’t see it happening for the moment — not with respect to Beijing, or Tehran, or Jerusalem, or Havana, or ... Well, the list could go on.
In the 1950s, as he watched his country getting embroiled in the conflict that would become the Vietnam War, a U.S. official observed: “Whether the French like it or not, independence is coming to Indochina. Why therefore do we tie ourselves to the tail of their battered kite?”
Obama is still hitched to too many battered kites...
New foundations are needed. But they can’t be built in halfway houses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/...
JFK: 'The Tide Is Unfavorable' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWcOHBD41vg
At a fundamental level, that funk is about a power shift. The United States is not what it was. It got attacked and the response has proved draining in blood and treasure. Anger accumulated, frustrations and debt grew. America’s 20th-century role is unraveling, albeit slowly, but its 21st-century role is not yet born.
Like it or not, we are witnessing the relative decline of the West. It’s going to be a long, slow movie but I don’t think the plot is going to reverse itself.
This transition prompts a couple of reactions. One is “To heck with the world.” Many Republicans (and Sarah Palin comes to mind) are in this my-way-or-the-highway place. The other is: Let’s adjust to the new reality through outreach and a new modesty. Obama is somewhere in that zone.
The thing is the president needs some results. I see him caught in a kind of halfway house. His gut tells him the world has changed and demands new policies but Washington politics keep him stuck in the conventional. His first year on the world stage has offered innovative speeches but largely unoriginal policy.
I suspect he’s not yet confident enough to have the courage of his convictions. Or perhaps he just needs more grown-ups in the White House. The transition from a very successful campaign to power is still a work in progress. If I get another mass e-mailing from the White House about what Obama’s “movement” needs next, the response will be ugly. That’s not how you govern.
The issue is change. Obama has spoken of “a new foundation.” It’s needed within and without, where the vital centers of growth have shifted to China, India, Brazil. But change is not about speeches. It’s about conviction and courage. I don’t see it happening for the moment — not with respect to Beijing, or Tehran, or Jerusalem, or Havana, or ... Well, the list could go on.
In the 1950s, as he watched his country getting embroiled in the conflict that would become the Vietnam War, a U.S. official observed: “Whether the French like it or not, independence is coming to Indochina. Why therefore do we tie ourselves to the tail of their battered kite?”
Obama is still hitched to too many battered kites...
New foundations are needed. But they can’t be built in halfway houses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/...
JFK: 'The Tide Is Unfavorable' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWcOHBD41vg
Hmmm......hold that thought.
Passing the peace,