Obama must be pressured to separate principle from expediency

One hundred and twenty days into his first term as president, Barack Obama has galvanized opposition from both the left and the right, though his personal popularity and favorable opinion ratings remain very high. Where George Bush was the cowboy sheriff, firing from the hip with a snort and a smirk, Obama is the lawyerly professor, gathering input, offering compromise, explaining his practical, non-ideological approach in speeches, town hall meetings and press conferences.

Yet for all his promise of change and his rhetoric of inclusion and transparency, the policies emerging from the early days of the Obama administration are frustrating to progressives, and some bear disturbing parallels to the administration he loves to repudiate. Maybe it’s the all-powerful shadow government calling the shots, or maybe there’s some truth in the adage that the ultimate responsibility of the office has a sobering effect on the idealism of former presidential candidates. Or maybe Obama’s idealism needs a jump start after four months of shock and awe from dealing with the nightmare he inherited.

We can of course disregard the hysteria from the right, labeling Obama by turns a socialist, a tyrant, a spineless wimp and the anti-Christ incarnate. That was inevitable, and Obama was foolish to extend an olive branch to the ideologues who continue to march in lock step, even now as a shrinking, obstructionist minority. (Message to red states: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. We’ll help you pack your bags!)

But from the left the criticism of Obama has been both valid and at times unfair.

Despite Obama’s rejection of extreme interrogation methods, and especially waterboarding, he has shown no interest in a thorough investigation and even a nonpartisan prosecution of the policy-makers. How can torture be totally wrong and yet legally forgivable?

Obama has been steadfast in his determination to bring health care reform to Americans, a welcome and long-overdue approach, yet he refuses to seriously consider a single-payer system, which is the only avenue that will reduce medical costs in an environment of social justice.

Obama has condemned the greed and moral depravity of Wall Street, yet his bailout programs and stimulus initiatives put far too much money in the hands of those who created the problems and not enough in the hands of those who need immediate relief. His version of Roosevelt’s New Deal is a pale impostor, with trickle-down capitalism instead of massive public works projects, and his key economic appointment, Timothy Geithner, seems unable to think outside of the rarified box in which he was incubated.

These are all valid concerns heard from the left and issues for which Obama’s feet must be held to the fire. As he himself noted, it’s not enough to vote for change; each of us must embody it and pressure those at the top, starting from the grassroots level. And as Howard Zinn so pointedly observed, Obama is above all a politician; he will take the path of compromise and triangulation unless he is pressured to do otherwise.

Obama is beholden to the rules of the game in Washington, which quite simply boils down to the prevailing power of money. As long as corporate interests finance Congressional and presidential campaigns, issues like meaningful gun control (the assault weapons pouring into Mexico) and single-payer health care are off the table. Could Obama spend his political capital and force the issue: probably, but he doesn’t want to take on a battle he thinks he’ll lose, so it’s up to citizens like us to choose our issues and force his hand.

National security/foreign policy is a more complex area to evaluate because so much information is classified or filtered through partisan prisms and therefore much harder to evaluate. But reversing course on military tribunals, while it may be repugnant in principle, is not a decision I take issue with, as long as at least some basic human rights are respected. The problem is that some terrorists we have tortured in the Bush-Cheney era and hardened into mortal enemies of our nation –even if they were not so to begin with – cannot be set free, and other nations won’t take them. Guantánamo can and should be closed, but there is no way to provide civilian trials for some of its inmates (the “evidence” is either hearsay or inadmissible coerced confessions), and criticism of Obama’s response to an abominable situation he didn’t create strikes me as unfair. What would progressives do with the few dozen Gitmo detainees who can’t be tried, yet can’t be set free?

What troubles me more are Obama’s protectiveness of executive power (White House e-mails and guest logs, for example) in cases when transparency has no virtuous counter-argument, and a persistent, almost reflexive pragmatism when principles such as the constitutional duty to prosecute torturers are sacrificed to short-term political expediency. And sadly, if predictably, Obama has thus far embraced the culture of militarism and empire, with a little lip service to nuclear nonproliferation. What we need is a mindset of espousing alternatives to violence – a high bar indeed to set for a mainstream politician, but the only path to continued evolution of the human species.

If Obama is to make a difference it must be not with lofty rhetoric but with leading a government that actually protects and defends its neediest citizens from social and cultural evil, safeguarding them not only from foreign attack but from domestic predators of every stripe and from the self-serving instincts of their own leaders. That’s the Obama I voted for, and for that I will hold him accountable.