Poor E.J. Dionne! He is suffering through the same transition process experienced by many Obama supporters who have been confronted with the demise of the President’s phony “populist” image. The stages one passes through when coping with such an “image death” are identical to those described in the Model of Coping with Dying, created in 1969 by Psychiatrist, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. For example, a few weeks ago, Bill Maher was passing through the “Bargaining” stage – at which point he suggested that if we elect Obama to a second term in the White House, the President will finally stand up for all of those abandoned principles which candidate Obama advocated during the 2008 campaign. As we saw during Friday’s episode of Maher’s Real Time program on HBO, the comedian has now progressed to the “Acceptance” stage, as demonstrated by his abandonment of any “hope” that Obama’s pseudo-populist image might still be viable.
Meanwhile E.J. Dionne appears to be transitioning from the “Denial” stage to the “Anger” stage – as exemplified by his dwelling on the issue of who is to blame for this image death. Dionne’s conclusion is that “Centrists” are to blame. Dionne’s recent Washington Post column began with the premise that “centrism has become the enemy of moderation”. While attempting to process his anger, Dionne has expounded some tortured logic, rambling through an elaborate “distinction without a difference” comparison of “Centrists” with “Moderates”, based on the notion that Moderates are good and Centrists are bad. Dionne’s article was cross-posted at the Truthdig blog, where many commentors criticized his argument. One reason why so many Truthdig readers had less trouble accepting the demise of Obama’s false “populist” image, could have been their exposure to the frequent criticism of Obama appearing at that website – as exemplified by this cartoon by Mr. Fish, which appeared immediately to the left of Dionne’s article on Saturday.
An easy way to make sense of Dionne’s thought process at this “Anger” stage is to replace any references to “centrists” or “centrism” by inserting Obama’s name at those points. For example:
Because
centrismObama is reactive, you never really know whata centristObama believes.Centrists areObama is constantly packingtheirhis bags and chasing off to find a new location as the political conversation veers one way or another.* * *
Yet
the center’s devotees, in politics and in the media,Obama fear(s) saying outright that by any past standards—or by the standards of any other democracy—the views of this new right wing are very, very extreme and entirely impractical.CentristsObama worr(ies) that saying this might makethemhim look “leftist” or “partisan.”Instead,
the centerObama bends.ItHe concocts deficit plans that include too little new tax revenue.ItHe accepts cuts in programs that would have seemed radical and draconian even a couple of years ago.ItHe pretends this crisis is caused equally by conservatives and liberals when it is perfectly clear that there would be no crisis at all if the right hadn’t glommed onto the debt ceiling as the (totally inappropriate) vehicle for its anti-government dreams.It’s time for moderates to abandon
centrismObama and stop shifting with the prevailing winds. They need to state plainly what they’re for, stand their ground, and pull the argument their way. Yes, they would risk looking to “the left” of wherethe centerObama is now – but only because conservatives have pulledithim so far their way.
Toward the end of the piece we see how Dionne is getting some glimpses of the fact that Obama is the problem:
But when this ends, it’s Obama who’ll need a reset. At heart, he’s a moderate who likes balance. Yet Americans have lost track of what he’s really for. Occasionally you wonder if he’s lost track himself. He needs to remind us, and perhaps himself, why he wants to be our president.
In reality, Barack Obama was able to deceive Americans by convincing them that he was for populist causes rather than corporatist goals. The President never “lost track of what he’s really for”. He has always been Barry O. Tool – a corporatist.
At the conclusion of Dionne’s essay we learn that – contrary to what we were told by Harry Truman – “the buck” stops at the desks of Obama’s “centrist advisers”:
His advisers are said to be obsessed with the political center, but this leads to a reactive politics that won’t motivate the hope crowd that elected Obama in the first place. Neither will it alter a discourse whose terms were set during most of this debt fight by the right.
We’ve heard the “blame the advisers” rationale from others who passed through the Kübler-Ross phases at earlier points during the Obama Presidency: There were those who sought to blame Rahm Emanuel when the “public option” was jettisoned from Obama’s healthcare bill. We then heard from the “Hope fiends” who blamed Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and Peter Orszag for Obama’s refusal to seriously consider the “Swedish solution” of putting the zombie megabanks through temporary receivership. In fact, it was Obama making those decisions all along.
I’m confident that once E.J. Dionne reaches the “Acceptance” stage, we will hear some refreshing, centered criticism of President Obama.
Circular Firing Squad
I knew this would happen. Near the end of Obama’s first year in office, I anticipated that the President’s polling numbers would eventually sink and his reelection campaign would face strong headwinds. By that point – on the eve of his reelection campaign – someone would blame the defection of white voters for Obama’s failure to win a second term. In December of 2009, I wrote a piece discussing how the “race card” would not serve as a “free pass” for the Disappointer-In-Chief. I referenced critiques, written by several African-American commentators, who were more-than-a-little upset with Obama’s job performance during that first year.
As expected, once Obama’s approval rating dropped to 40%, it didn’t take too long for someone to step forward with the “blame whitey” meme. Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor of political science at Tulane University, recently wrote an article for The Nation, wherein she blamed racism for Obama’s declining popularity:
Despite the fact that Obama has yet to lose the 2012 election, Professor Harris-Perry has already seen fit to assemble a “circular firing squad” to assign blame for the Obama campaign’s inevitable failure. Her theory about racism drew quick fire from more-intelligent commentators, who exposed the absurdity of her claim. Corey Robin, who earned a PhD in Political Science from Yale, did a thorough job of debunking Professor Harris-Perry’s claim. Among the points made by Dr. Robin, was this:
The most important point made by Corey Robin was his focus on the overarching problem of Obama’s politics:
Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism ripped Professor Harris-Perry’s article to shreds. Ms. Smith concluded her essay by placing blame back on the man himself:
Melissa Harris-Perry is forgetting that Barack Obama is only half black. In fact, many of us are blaming Obama’s white half for breaking so many campaign promises and for his selling out to the plutocracy.