The president’s defenders told liberals and progressives that Obama would burst out as a liberal during his second term. But he renewed 99.5% of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. He nominated Chuck Hagel, a homophobic Republican, as Secretary of Defense. For Treasury Secretary he picked a veteran of Citibank who bet on the housing market to collapse. What’s going on? Maybe Obama will turn into FDR in his third term.
After a mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school claimed 28 lives, Pres. Obama and other politicians said that there was finally political will to do something about gun control. But then incrementalism reared its ugly head once again. Now members of Congress say that the only thing we can expect out of this session will be legislation governing the number of bullets that go into the magazines used by semiautomatic weapons. You still end up dead. But you might get to have an open casket funeral.
Obama wakes up in the middle night, worrying that there’s some principle he forgot to sell out.
As government ages, it becomes less interested in what the people care about.
Just when you think Obama was done bending over backwards to please right-wing Republicans–voting for the Iraq War over and over and over, voting for the Afghan War over and over and over, proposing an Afghan surge, voting to gut FISA–he flip-flops on offshore oil drilling, an issue that had been settled decades ago.
As I ask so often…what next?
