Advice is Cheap

It seems everyone’s got ideas for the Obama administration. Organizations and causes that have had nothing to do with the office of the president for at least eight years are crawling out of the woodwork and once again offering up their agendas to the president-to-be’s scrutiny.

Those agitating for marijuana legalization seem much more hopeful than the situation warrants. Obama ran on a “law and order” ticket—interested in enforcing the laws the way they are—and, though he’s shown pragmatism, he has in no way shown any tendency to radically change things. That is, when told that the prisons are bursting because of moronic drugs laws that criminalize everyone, he’s still more likely to authorize spending to build more prisons than to radically change the country’s attitude toward drugs.

Similarly, there are many who “can’t wait” for Obama to get into office so that he can get about cleaning up the mess in the Middle East. Hardly. Everything he’s said about that conflict indicates that his handling of the current incursion wouldn’t have differed at all from that of the Bush administration.

In other words, don’t hold your breath—but don’t give up hope, either. He’s intelligent and much more likely to bend to popular will if it’s shown to have overwhelming support. Where Bush didn’t care what the public wanted, Obama has not yet proven himself so callous and seems more open to changing his mind. (though how could he not be?)

Anyway, Obama on the Precipice (AlterNet) has a list of ten things Obama should not do during his administration. It’s interesting to look at them and see how likely it is that he will avoid doing them.

Screwing Up the Stimulus Plan

Honestly? There’s not much he can do here; it’s hard to know how to go about “fixing” the economy. Do you accept that its basic principles are wrong and let it completely collapse, building up something more sustainable in its place? A lot of people would suffer, but it’s a better long-range view. Do you just scramble to put things back the way they were, warts and all? Do you leave all the same people who caused the debacle in place to run things again? They know the most about it, but they also ran it into the ground. Is Keynesianism the right answer? Is a return to the Austrian system better? Who knows? The best Obama can do is at least listen to everyone (and being willing to listen to Paul Krugman as well as Larry Summers is a good start).

Escalate the War in Afghanistan & Continue the Occupation in Iraq

Obama has stated several times that he’s definitely doing the former with at least 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan and subito. He’s also pledged to leave Iraq, but has lately changed his definition of immediately to include “within three years or more”. He accepts that the “surge worked”, loves the hell right out of David Petraeus and has the same Secretary of Defense as Bush. Exactly how much hope do you have to have to believe Obama’s going to do anything remotely anti-war? At what point does it just become wishful thinking?

Settle for a Health Care Plan That Doesn’t Include a Competitive Government-Sponsored ‘Medicare for All’ Program

He’s been very clear about his medical plan and it’s most definitely not a universal health care plan, so stop dreaming. Obama has bigger fish to fry right now, so accept that nothing’s going to happen on the health insurance front until it becomes a bigger crisis than the war(s) or the economy. Obama is not going to change the tradition of “hacking government” where you stumble from extinguishing one fire after another without trying to fix anything for the long-term. He’s not magical and won’t be able to overcome the short-sighted lethargia of the Senate and the Congress, even if he wanted to.

Fail to Forcefully Defend Workers’ Rights to Join a Union and Deal with Corporate America on a Level Playing Field

Obama’s support of unions to date has been to play lip service, at best. It’s unknown just how much political capital he’s willing to expend on this. Again, with all of the Congress and the Senate abandoning unions and the media strongly against them as well (for decades now), odds are anyone who thinks that unions will make a comeback under Obama are probably setting themselves up for a fall. The corporations have won, Obama’s beholden to them as well, despite his protestations and we’ll have to await either a complete return-to-stone-age collapse or a revolution or both before anything changes here.

Continue the Destructive, Discredited, So-Called War on Drugs

Overwhelming evidence for the discontinuation of the drug war due to spiraling costs and non-effectivess notwithstanding, Obama’s probably not going to do anything about ending the drug war. Despite being America’s first black president, he hasn’t been very outspoken on traditionally black issues, like incredibly unfair sentencing policies, massively disproportionate jailing policies and the punitive handling of the drug problem. So, we’re not likely to see much change on this front, especially considering the people in his cabinet, who are overwhelmingly blinkered and ideological about drug policy.

Fail to Prioritize Climate Change and Continue Fantasies About ‘Clean Coal’

Obama will prioritize climate change—it’s likely his stimulus package will attempt to create jobs in this sector—but he’s also going to happily kowtow to the “clean coal” industry. Generally, when a politician can’t shut up about an issue like that during the campaign, he’s not going to change his mind once he gets elected. Unless it was some populist pap he babbled just to get elected; promises to corporations generally get kept, in constrast to those made to the people.[1]

Fail to End Torture and Return the Country to Its Founding Principles on Human Rights and the Rule of Law

There’s a decent chance this will happen, though most likely not as quickly or consistently as any of us would like. He also can’t do it alone, and he’s going to be dealing with very hostile legislative and judicial branches on the issue. Most of them still think we can use torture to fulfill our 24-like fantasies of having Jack Bauer stop a ticking time bomb.

Ignore the Emerging Water Crises

Not having enough water to drink concerns Americans far less than the price of gas. It’s a long-term issue and will thus not even show up on the radar for the administration or the media. Only once it becomes a larger emergency than the other issues of a day will it get any attention. Until then, it’s politically safe to ignore it and concentrate on putting out more publicly visible fires.

Continue the Bush Administration’s Warped View of How to Approach the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Not. F&$%ing. Likely. Listen to Obama’s speech to AIPAC during his campaign. Read anything he’s written about the conflict. Look at the outright Zionist he chose for his Secretary of State. Israel should be grinning ear-to-ear right now. Nothing will change in regard to U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The U.S. veto supporting Israel in the U.N. will still be standard. $3–4 billion per year to Israel in military aid will still be standard. Condemnation of only Hamas for terror will still be standard.

Continue to Detain Nonviolent Immigration Offenders

Again, waaaaay off the radar screen for this administration. You’d think Obama would care about this injustice and illogical waste of money, but he’s a very political animal as well: there’s no points to be won by being fair to immigrants, a group of people that many Americans consider to be firmly in a third-class, located below the second-class occupied by pets.

All of the issues above are interesting and good ones and, though they may be in the mainstream of the American public, they’re far from the positions of most of the national elected officials. That means, should Obama choose to champion one or more of them, he’s going to be going it alone against the Congress and the Senate. At best, he’ll be able to veto the most aggregious horrors passed to his desk from those two august bodies, but it will be hard for him to effect change on his own, should he even choose to.[2]

The American government generally concerns itself with very short-term thinking. Thinking in the long term and correcting small problems before they become big ones is a thankless job. Waiting until problems explode into catastrophes is politically safe because you can always blame others for having failed to do anything about them and you can’t go wrong working on problems that are blindingly obvious. Subtlety and thinking ahead are actively punished in American politics, so don’t expect too much of that. Throw a rabid anti-intellectualism into the mix and America’s on track for acheiving Idiocracy much earlier than predicted. Carter’s really the last president who would even have considered doing anything like this and Obama’s no Carter.

Cool CatThe media and the Republicans have already begun trying to pin the blame for the current state of the country on Obama and will only increase their efforts after he takes office. Within months, most Americans will believe that every last shitheap left behind by the Bush administration is actually Obama’s fault. Naturally, as president, it’s all his responsibility to clean up, so what’s the difference? Since Bush won’t be president anymore, there’s only one person to blame for the whole mess: Barack Hussein Obama. Look at that picture though; he seems like he could do anything[3]; maybe he can escape the downward cycle as well. Who knows? We can hope.

If Obama can avoid having the whole country blame him for everything that’s wrong with it by June, he will already have accomplished a lot. If he can avoid getting impeached by Christmas for not having “fixed” America yet, it will be a miracle.