Raw Dawg Buffalo blogs:
I was optimistic that Obama meant what he said, and would do accordingly. But I am slowly becoming disillusioned. He spoke of change, and not having the “good old boy” network of “Washington Insiders” in his administration – yet he does. I won’t even get on the usual talk of tax reduction, war ending and other stuff that all democrats and republicans chant like some Taoist mantra.
I don’t understand how anyone could seriously believe that Obama wasn’t a politician just like any other. I find it hard to stomach liberals’ predictable shock at Obama doing non-liberal, politician-esque stuff. It’s the biggest DUH of the 21st century.
It doesn’t matter how cool the design is on your Obama t-shirt, bumper sticker, and window sign. He isn’t liberal. He wasn’t born without original sin. And black people are no less susceptible to the corrupting effects of power than the 43 white presidents. Because black people are human too.
I feel like this isn’t even a cynical outlook. It’s simply an outlook based on observable reality.
It’s even more observable if you look at Obama’s actual political career in the Illinois Senate.
And it was pretty obvious from the beginning that he was going to have to have a large coterie of Washington insiders in his Administration. He’d only been around Washington for about 2 years before he started to spend most of his time running for President. He needs people around him who know how things work if he’s going to have a hope of getting anything done, and since he hasn’t had time to learn the people and the procedures himself he’s going to have to turn to the insiders.
Understand that I’m not saying that to cast aspersions on Obama. From my viewpoint it all depends on who he picks. But for people to have thought that he was going to avoid hiring on a bunch of Washington insiders and yet build an effective Administration seems quite naive to me. And naivete is a lousy base to build your choice of a candidate on.
How on earth is Obama not doing what he said he would? He talked constantly about working in a bipartison manner, reaching across the isle to work with his opponents, hiring the “best people” irregardless of ideology, etc. I remember this being exactly Edwards’ critique of Obama during the primary. Edwards admitted that, unlike Clinton, Obama was a candidate of change, but said that Obama wanted to work together with the entrenched interests to bring about change, but that he, Edwards, believed that the entrenched interests would always work to thwart change, and so you can not work with them, you have to fight them. I agreed with Edwards, and that’s why I supported him over Obama until he dropped out. Now, if you want to build a coalition of Obama supporters urging Obama to abandon his attempt to work with instead of against TPTB, sign me up. But do not expect me to commiserate with your disappointment that Obama is doing exactly what he said for two years that he would do rather than what you were hoping he would do, apparently without ever actually listening to the guy.
Wow, this quote is one of the few ever that I think makes more sense outside its context. As far as I can make out, the original post says that because Senate Democrats didn’t want to seat Burris, Obama is going to be a bad president? Can anyone explain this, at least to point out where I lost the thread?