'TNR asks prominent intellectuals where they stand on the president.' by TNR Staff
This is an interesting bit of information as it sums up the liberal frustration with the Obama administration. While conservatives and republicans claim the administration has gone too far left - this is simply rhetoric - the thinkers out there examine the reality of realpolitik.
Two comments - see all at link below.
"I recognize that, in domestic matters, the opportunity has been lost for reforms on a grander scale than Obama has already achieved. (Still, I applaud the achievements. Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal may have been grander yet, but the existing one is good enough. Not for nothing do I endorse Barack Obama for president.) But now that people no longer mutter in their soup about George W. Bush, hasn’t the time arrived to speak up audibly about human rights? And about mad ideologies and their influence in several parts of the world? An Obama administration might even discover that a policy of democratic solidarity would, in the long run, confer practical benefits." PB
"Most of what has kept Obama from realizing his maximum potential would have kept Hillary Clinton from realizing hers. I refer, of course, to the Republican Party in company with very big money, availing themselves of an archaic Senate structure, anti-majoritarian rules, the Supremes’ recent plutocratic ruling in Citizens United, and so on. Would Hillary have fought more effectively against a dead-ended Afghanistan re-up, against bloated military spending, against torture, against extending the Bush tax cuts for the plutocracy, for prosecution of the irresponsibles who wrecked the global financial system? I doubt it. So I have no regrets. Health care reform (compromises and all), the repeal of DADT, Senate passage of New Start, all lift my heart." TG
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/81086/president-barack-obama-after-two-years
"In the political turnover in the United States in the autumn of 1994, as previously indicated, those opposing aid to the poor in its several forms won their stunning victory with the support of less than one quarter all eligible voters, fewer than half of whom had gone to the polls. The popular and media response was that those who had prevailed represented the view and voice of the public. Had there been a full turnout at the election, both the result and the reaction would have been decidedly different. The sense of social responsibility for the poor would have been greatly enhanced." John Kenneth Galbraith 'The Good Society'
This is an interesting bit of information as it sums up the liberal frustration with the Obama administration. While conservatives and republicans claim the administration has gone too far left - this is simply rhetoric - the thinkers out there examine the reality of realpolitik.
Two comments - see all at link below.
"I recognize that, in domestic matters, the opportunity has been lost for reforms on a grander scale than Obama has already achieved. (Still, I applaud the achievements. Hillary Clinton’s health care proposal may have been grander yet, but the existing one is good enough. Not for nothing do I endorse Barack Obama for president.) But now that people no longer mutter in their soup about George W. Bush, hasn’t the time arrived to speak up audibly about human rights? And about mad ideologies and their influence in several parts of the world? An Obama administration might even discover that a policy of democratic solidarity would, in the long run, confer practical benefits." PB
"Most of what has kept Obama from realizing his maximum potential would have kept Hillary Clinton from realizing hers. I refer, of course, to the Republican Party in company with very big money, availing themselves of an archaic Senate structure, anti-majoritarian rules, the Supremes’ recent plutocratic ruling in Citizens United, and so on. Would Hillary have fought more effectively against a dead-ended Afghanistan re-up, against bloated military spending, against torture, against extending the Bush tax cuts for the plutocracy, for prosecution of the irresponsibles who wrecked the global financial system? I doubt it. So I have no regrets. Health care reform (compromises and all), the repeal of DADT, Senate passage of New Start, all lift my heart." TG
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/81086/president-barack-obama-after-two-years
"In the political turnover in the United States in the autumn of 1994, as previously indicated, those opposing aid to the poor in its several forms won their stunning victory with the support of less than one quarter all eligible voters, fewer than half of whom had gone to the polls. The popular and media response was that those who had prevailed represented the view and voice of the public. Had there been a full turnout at the election, both the result and the reaction would have been decidedly different. The sense of social responsibility for the poor would have been greatly enhanced." John Kenneth Galbraith 'The Good Society'
