MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2010 - This Day In History
Obama, where art thou?
Posted By FrankHope - Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 at 8:23 AM
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Obama denounces his own minister that married him and baptized his children, then abandons his own church. What next? Will he divorce his own wife for controversial remarks she has made in the past?

When will Obama develop a backbone and stand up for what he believes in? It's not worth becoming President of the United States if this is the price you have to pay, but I don't believe it is. If Obama would show some leadership and stop capitulating to every right wing attack, then maybe his supporters would back him up.

But when he quickly abandons anyone in his campaign that says anything at all controversial, even if it's true, then his loyal supporters not surprisingly quickly follow suit. And in the end there will be little left of substance to this campaign.

We're gradually going from "change we can believe in" to "change, what change?" There was never a huge difference in policy between Obama and Clinton, and there is a shrinking difference between Obama and McCain.

A case in point is the issue of talking to enemies, such as Iran and Syria. Early in the campaign in one of the debates, Obama forcefully stated the case for dialogue at the highest level with our adversaries. But under attack from McCain and the conservative press, Obama has significantly backed off from that opinion.

Yet according to an article on boston.com a new Gallup poll "found that 67 percent of Americans support the president meeting with leaders of countries considered US enemies; 79 percent of Democrats think so, as do 70 percent of independents. Only a slight majority of Republicans, 51 percent, oppose such talks."

Obama, where art thou?

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Discussion:

I am not sure this cri de coeur is all that helpful, or indeed accurate.  The Trinity matter is a despicable commentary on the state of the supposed separation of Church and State (religion and politics) in this country.  I have written a blog on this which might interest some site members

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stevenb/gGBy4M

It is sad, but I can't see that Obama is to blame for this state of affairs.

But I also think you are not being realistic or fair about Obama's recent statements about his foreign policy.  According to a recent NYT article, Obama's position on meeting the leaders of enemy countries has always been as "nuanced" as it currently is, and if he makes a distinction between "preconditions" and "preparations" he means it.  The talks he has referred to, Kennedy and Khruschev, Nixon with Mao Zedong (imagine!), did not happen over night, there were months of (often secret) preparations, even if there were no "we won't negotiate before we have all the concessions we want" preconditions a la Bush) so it is absolutely right of Obama to make this point.  Similarly, Obama is just saying the plain truth, in a quite sophisticated way, when he says that he would not necessarily want to meet with Ahmedinejad, because the Iranian president is not the most powerful person in Iran.  That is true!

Look, I would also like a more reasonable, liberal policy toward Cuba for instance, just as I think that a single-payer health care system is by far the most efficient and fair, but that simply ain't on in today's America.  Maybe it will be in the future, but we have to have eight years of sane, imaginative, government under Obama first, in which Obama's grasp of the need for national unity and mutual understanding is spread to a large, "working" majority of the Americna people.  So we have to get there first, and that involves playing the poker-game of presidential politics for all it is worth, and still retaining a huge amount of integrity, as I think Obama has done.

In any case, it looks as though today we will secure the first part of the process, the Democratic nomination.  Let us celebrate this, and focus on what we need to do to win the general--fair and square, and with more than enough really important policy changes and key structural changes to reform, indeed radically reshape the American political system and government.

[ Posted at 3:30 PM on 6/3/08 | Reply ]

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