Obama at 5 months

I have been ruminating a bit today about this president of ours. If I had to give him a grade at this point it would be a c+ or maybe a b-. Barack Obama has shown us a side of himself through his actions that one would not be aware of listening to his pretty speeches. Now I for one, don't really have a problem with his health care push or his stimulus package. We are in a heap of trouble with the outrageous debt we have amassed but our economic problem was not going to get fixed by itself or by continuing Bush administration business as usual.

What I was not really aware of us was what an appeaser this president apparently is. How utterly squeamish and pragmatic he has turned out to be. I heard someone liken his policies to Kissinger's realpolitic the other day and thought how true. Constantly weighing the cross and prevailing winds like a weatherman or a junior bean counter, Obama subverts his own agenda for change in this country. He has caved on many environmental issues, from delisting wolves to allowing mountaintop removal in coal mining. He basically has rubber stamped Bush's policy on warrant less wiretapping and government transparency. His CIA Director, Leon Panetta, is afraid to cross the crusty tradecrafters in his domain. Obama has shafted the gays in the military where apparently it is okay to be a white supremacist but not a homosexual. The President seems to capitulate so much that I find myself longing for the recent past when at least the administration had an ideology, no matter how twisted. He seems more like a people pleaser. I fear that we could better use a prick.

Abbie Hoffman once talked bout the danger of being co-opted by the machine. I think that you quickly get institutionalized in Washington and tempered by virtue of how things have always operated. It is hard to make any kind of shift, let alone a radical one, in all of the centrifugal miasma. In constantly asking himself what is feasible, I fear he has surrendered the point of his javelin. Now he acts like an accommodator. The greek philosopher Zeno once proposed that an arrow can never truly reach it's mark because it has to travel an infinite number of half steps. In not setting his sights on the highest target, our president is diminishing his ability to effect change. Perhaps he would be best characterized as an incrementalist.

George Bush was not afraid to stand up for his agenda, as much as I disagreed with it. Obama needs to examine the issues he ran on and find himself in time for a early course correction. We voted for change, remember?