I drifted by Lawyers, Guns and Money the other day. I think and I want to be fair, they were strongly arguing that the presidency is not as powerful as it appears, at least on domestic matters. Their post was in response to a David Sorita post at Salon and commented on at Slobber and Spittle.
At any rate the argument being made on moderate liberal blogs, like LG&M, (for want of a better term) seems to be that Obama has done the best he can given the way this country's national political system is structured. I made the point that in that case we shouldn't fear a Michelle Bachmann presidency.
The point I feel needs to be made is that Obama had a chance to make some real changes upon his election and for a few months there after. Once he had shown what he really was, which isn't much, then there was not so much of a chance of anything even remotely resembling hope of change coming out of him.
If the argument is that he didn't want or isn't bright enough to do more than he is doing, that seems to me a different argument then that he doesn't (or at least didn't at the beginning) have the intrinsic power to make major changes and yet that seems to be the new defense of Obama from moderate liberals.
It is I guess possible to think that all his problems come from his desire to appear bipartisan, but if that is the case then his desire for bipartisanship is pathological and nearly certifiable.
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Commented on here at Slobber And Spittle, by the way.
It's amazing what sort of mental gyrations people will go to to avoid admitting that Obama has the same powers that a Republican President would have. I don't doubt that there are some disparities, but George W. Bush was able to do far more to advance conservative agendas than Obama has advanced a progressive one, and yet somehow I'm supposed to believe that this is all Obama could manage.
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