There are two essential rationales people can use on the left to blame Obama and the White House for the failure of the Senate to produce a bill with a public option and/or Medicare buy-in provisions.

The first is that Obama is a super-genius 11-dimensional chess master who has been setting up all the pieces to knock them down precisely to accomplish health care reform without these two progressive policies in place.

The second is that Obama can swoop into the Senate, jiggle a few carrots, whack a few sticks, and everyone would fall in line and health care reform would pass with the exact requirements of Obama and his White House without further complications.

Anyone who ascribes to either of these positions is a fool, or really digs the DC universe.

I personally think Obama should have done more to pressure moderate Democrats to toe the line on this issue; I don’t think it would have done any good, but at least Obama would have demonstrated some position. As nice as it is to have a White House administration more interesting in passing legislation than jockeying for power, it doesn’t hurt to bluster on occasion.

But I’m not going to sit here and argue what others have: that Obama is essentially talking a good game in public but sneaking wry grins in private as his plan to limit health care reform unfold. These sorts of extremes do nothing but persist the idea that the executive branch not only does but should have a choke hold on the rest of the government. Quite frankly, even if Obama did have the power and clout to wrangle the Senate into line, which I don’t think he does, shouldn’t we be glad he isn’t doing that? I thought Bush was hated for his abuse of the office, not because he abused it to get things we didn’t like.

Glenn Greenwald has been making much hullabaloo over the White House’s apparent willingness to drop the public option and a medicare buy-in from the Senate health care bill for the sake of getting a bill through Congress before the process manages to collapse in on itself.

Many different progressives have been reminding Glenn that the President isn’t all powerful and that expending his political capital trying to push obstinate senators toward a more progressive bill would almost certainly result in nothing, or worse a deeper obstinacy from senators feeling bullied.

He cites the example of the White House pressuring freshman Democrats with what is essentially ostracism if they don’t vote for a war funding bill as proof that Obama can play hardball with the legislative branch when he really wants something done. But I think this ignores some depressing realities within Congress.

Obama can pressure freshman congressman to support a war bill because they are likely on the left, and people on the left need the support of the DNC and the Obama Administration. But on health care, Obama would have to push people from the Right towards the Left, something for which he can offer no incentives.

Nelson won Nebraska despite Obama losing, not because of it. There’s no pressure he can apply in that situation. And Lieberman is a petulant child who wants only to punish progressive policies. Maybe Obama could have tried the hardball tactics here, and maybe it would have worked, but these two scenarios are not comparable except in the most superficial way.

Generally speaking, I’m OK with what Obama has done so far. I’m not particularly fond of the way he’s handling the economic crisis — it’s a little too deferential to the whims of an industry that imploded through incompetence and greed — but he’s generally improved America. And this is only three months in. That said, I’m not such a fanatic that I can ignore the increasingly serpentine dictates coming from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.

Glenn Greenwald has been following, and closely scrutinizing, the DOJ’s positions in the hopes that Obama’s campaign rhetoric would lead to real change in the department most disturbed and malformed as a result of Bush’s corrupt administration. There have been advances, none miraculous. But what’s more troubling is the movement towards some of Bush’s positions rather than away. Obama’s Department of Justice continues to strengthen the abuses of power put in place by the Bush administration.

I was sympathetic at first. So early into his term, we shouldn’t be so demanding. Indeed, many of the problems the DOJ is faced would inflict wide-spread collateral damage. But the DOJ is doing more than asking for more time to consider the proper solution, they are fighting to ensure the unjust status quo remains. Get with it, Obama. Fix this shit now.

I’m a fan of Obama, but I’m also aware that he’s not the perfect politician for me. My stances are more liberal than his. But he’s still the best shot America has at truly improving itself over the next four years, so I’m cool with his imperfections. The change he brings may only be incremental rather than revolutionary, as his rhetoric implied, but it will be positive change nonetheless. A friend of mine, more offended by Obama’s recent dismissal of the legalization of marijuana than me, continued the argument by quoting from Glenn Greenwald’s article praising Senator Jim Webb’s recent push for prison reform, despite its impolitic implications.

I can do little but agree with this. It is the mark of a great man¹ that he says what people don’t wish to hear, that he pushes for the things the silent majority wishes to remain silent. And by this metric Obama is, for the most part, not a great man. He is an inspiring man. He is an articulate man. He is an intelligent man. But he is also a pragmatic man. And pragmatic men do what they think they can get done. Obama knows that to push for the legalization of marijuana, even timidly, would create a backlash that would distract from the work he has to get done.

Is his stance cowardly? In its own way, it most certainly is. And Webb is a braver man for the fight he brings to the Capitol. But that is, I think, something for which Obama has been previously praised. His pragmatism is what allowed a first term African-American Senator, with the middle name Hussein, and a Muslim father to get where he is. He wouldn’t accomplish much at all if he was pushing for the wild-eyed quixotries of others. Unfortunately, his visual and cultural radicalisms limit his ability to be truly radical politically.

But this is not to say that he follows this actively. He simply is a political moderate man. The liberal arguments that he is secretly for the legalization of marijuana don’t hold any weight for me, any more than the conservative arguments that he is secretly a Muslim. He may not be someone fervently for the prosecution of casual users, as evidenced by his recent mandate that the DEA no longer raid state-run marijuana farms and his support of medical marijuana, but I don’t think that equates to legalization, or even decriminalization. His past usage is not compelling in this respect to me either; hypocrisy at this level among politicians is hardly new.

It’s disappointing to me that President Obama is unwilling to address the unpopularity of the marijuana and hemp laws, but it’s not entirely surprising. That’s not to say I support this position. I do not support it, nor do I respect Obama’s reasons, but I do understand it is a part of his politics.

---

Footnotes

1. A great woman as well, but let’s not get into neutral pronouns today, m’kay? [↩]

Glenn Greenwald wrote this morning about Obama’s new message to Iran. I absolutely agree that reconciliation and the development of peace is desirable, with any nation, but one note of his post struck me as slightly off:

But whatever else is true, it is a weak, decaying and insecure nation that beats its chest and relies on ugly threats to establish its “toughness” and “credibility” with the world, while the mark of a strong and confident nation is the willingness to take a first step like this one towards its adversaries.

This is true in many respects, most especially in our modern society. But it’s that temporal qualifier that makes the sentence true, a qualifier Greenwald excludes. At the height of the Byzantine Empire‘s reign, it was a military force to be reckoned with, sacking the cities of any nation that dared cross its border. But as its power and wealth dwindled, new invaders like the Saracens exploited that weakness. Ultimately, unable to defend themselves they resorted to buy-offs, providing their enemies with millions of pounds of gold to maintain their territory. As their star faded, much of their power was retained via political back channels, using conspiracies to wage their enemies against each other, and ceding territory for the sake of peace. But their true power was gone¹. It’s true that the truly great emperors of the Byzantine Empire also ruled justly, but that does not belie their military acumen and its use.

I don’t mean here to criticise President Obama’s policies, in fact I agree with his tact regarding Iran, for the most part. But it is a tact of its time. Which is a good thing. Our world is changing, the solutions of the future are not the solutions of the past, and America now has a President that understands that.

---

Footnotes

1. I apologize if I’m grossly wrong about any of the history of the Byzantine Empire; I’m mostly working off of memory for this, and even then my knowledge and analysis is mostly cursory. [↩]