On civil liberties, he not only continued the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of terrorism suspects but also claimed the right to assassinate American citizens without charge.
On foreign policy, he escalated old wars and initiated new ones. On healthcare, for instance, Obama passed a Heritage Foundation-inspired bailout of the private health insurance industry, all while undermining other more-progressive proposals. He has mustered the legislative strength of his New Deal predecessor - but he has channeled that strength into propping up the very forces of "organized money" that FDR once challenged. He is instead a Franklin Delano Roosevelt - but a bizarro FDR. Obama is not a flaccid Jimmy Carter, as some of his critics insist. Such apologism, of course, allows liberals to avoid the more painful truth that Obama is one of America's strongest presidents ever and is achieving exactly what he wants. And it's more than just silly - it's a narcissistic form of wishful thinking coming primarily from liberals who desperately want to believe "their" president is with them.
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Additionally, most agree that Obama is a brilliant, Harvard-trained lawyer who understands how to wield political power.Ĭonsidering this, and further considering Obama's early congressional majorities, it is silly to insist that the national political events during Obama's term represent a lack of presidential strength or will. Most agree that today's imperial presidency almost singularly determines the course of national politics. In this mythology, he is "President Pushover," as the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently labeled him. They usually stipulate that the president genuinely wants to enact the progressive agenda he campaigned on, but they gently reprimand him for failing to muster the necessary personal mettle to achieve that goal. This basic truth is belied by the meager Obama criticism you occasionally hear from liberal pundits and activists. Barack Obama is a lot of things - eloquent, dissembling, conniving, intelligent and, above all, calm.
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