HP: Forget the Carter Comparisons, Obama Is Following in the Footsteps of Harry Truman -- and That's

[dennis4868]

Even before this month's midterm shellacking, many commentators were saying that Barack Obama was beginning to look like the second coming of Jimmy Carter. Now, with Congress tacking hard to the right, and 64 newly-minted Republican House Members lining up behind John Boehner, the doomsayers are growing even louder and bolder.

But the Obama equals Carter crowd is way off the mark. The more accurate resemblance is between Obama and Harry Truman.

The similarities are striking. The 1946 midterm elections were seen as a referendum on President Truman, who had taken office a year and a half earlier, following FDR's death. The Democrats took a shellacking, losing the House, with Republicans picking up 55 seats. This was the first GOP victory since 1928, with the country convinced that Republicans were better equipped to handle the post-war economic recession. By 1948, Truman's popularity was still shaky and he barely won re-election -- indeed, the Chicago Tribune had such a hard time believing it, the paper anointed Dewey the winner in a bonehead headline for the ages.


see more here....http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-emanuel/post_1308_b_786617.html

I know the 24/7 anti-Obama wing of DU will not like this editorial but I think it is so true!

[liberal N proud]

1. We can hope that like Truman, Obama gets a second term

The country can't afford another republican president like the last one.

[Kolesar]

2. Did his order to "integrate" the armed forces give the racists an issue to rally around?

Halfway through the last century.
I really don't know.

I was not to happy about President Truman enabling the CIA and enabling the Cold War. The Cold War and the arms race did not have to happen. Or Vietnam

[leveymg]

3. I think it's an apt comparison

Truman and his crowd were far to the Right of FDR and the New Dealers, particularly his foreign policy advisors. He was expressly brought in to replace Vice President Henry Wallace in 1944, who was a true Progressive and an Internationalist. This made the American Left extremely unhappy, as did Truman's embrace of the emerging Cold War and what became known as McCarthyism, but what was actually an outgrowth of Truman's anti-communist loyalty oaths and the purge of the left-wing of the Democratic Party by the ADA "liberals".

On the other hand, Truman made some people very happy, when he almost single-handedly decided to cast the US vote at the UN as the tie-breaker in favor of the establishment of the modern state of Israel. There are those who still consider Truman to have been the greatest American President for that and the rejection of an accord with the Soviet Union. Truman's legacy is the Korean War, the costs and benefits of America's role of global super empire as the U.S. intervened wherever the battered empires of Europe withdrew, and the Middle East has had unending strife, and all that's associated with that. The world's what it is today, in large part because of Harry Truman.

There are, no doubt, some within the Party who would like to see Obama openly accept that legacy, and run with it.

[bemildred]

4. I agree, if you like Harry, you have to like where we have come since his day.

Because he set the course we are still on in Defense/Foreign Policy/Political Ideology. And so far, it appears Obama likes Harry. Of course there would be a good deal of inertia, and change will be forced, is being forced.

The USA today is not the USA after WWII, so a failure to adjust will continue to have unfortunate consequences, for us anyway.

[leveymg]

5. We are where Great Britain was in 1945: broke, exhausted, overextended.

I think what a lot of us wanted in 2008 is what the British did in 1945: cast out Churchill and the Tories, particularly their pretenses to maintaining the Empire, put a Labour Gov't in -- along with nationalization of the biggest banks, oil companies, and a national health service -- and start the process of a negotiated withdrawal of U.S. bases around the world, concentrate on rebuilding our export industry, and export, export, export our way out of our debts.

That's not what's happened. Instead we squandered that opportunity, and are now faced with seeing the Conservatives back in power without any of the social gains and none of the good-will (and savings) of setting free India and the rest of the colonies.

Obama blew it, or else he did what he intended to do - it's not clear whether this opportunity was missed or something else happened.

[bemildred]

6. I was thinking later, the 60s, but you can take these things too far anyway.

That is when I remember the British political classes feeding them the "service economy" bullshit.

We are probably going to have some back and forth, between Obamacrats and Republicans, politically, the public is easily led.

It is worth remembering that Churchill was PM again, in the fifties. He is another guy with a grossly inflated ego and historical rep.

[leveymg]

7. I think we're headed for a break with the past, rather than remaining stuck in a narrow middle rut.

The rest of the world will soon stop buying our bad debts, and we'll wake up one morning to find that half the multinational corporations have moved their global headquarters to Geneva and Dubai.

They'll write-off their American-market losses, and keep on doing what they've always done, but they just won't be doing it here as we tear what remains to shreds. We're like one-and-a half steps from that point.

[bemildred]

8. Well, yeah, how soon is the question.

That is my fundamental complaint, instead of governing, instead of adjusting to changes you cannot prevent, it's business as usual and bullshit your way through.

[leveymg]

9. Chalmers Johnson subscribed to "equilibrium theory." Johnson (1966) basically says that

competing elites tend to hold onto power until there is a crisis of legitimacy brought on by loss in war, economic setback, or failure to acceptably manage some cataclysmic event.

Once elite intransigence is added to system disequilibrium, the result can be massive loss in trust in the system. Ruling elites then suffer a quite sudden power deflation and loss of authority, which sets the stage for revolution. Actual insurrection is triggered when some accelerator event occurs -- military defeat, mutiny, or elite dissension -- in which the government loses its monopoly on the use of force. Often such an event is a massacre that occurs when loyal police or military units over-react, causing a split in the ranks, at which time the opposition along with some of the population then come to believe that overthrow of the existing order is possible. Once the rebellion reaches a point of "dual sovereignty", a plausible rival claim to legitimate rule, the old order is usually finished.

There are several rival sociological theories of revolution, but Johnson's has proven durable and is amply-demonstrated in its general contours.

[bemildred]

12. He was a great guy, a real thinker, it was a shame to lose him.

But the thing is, revolutions don't always have to be big, bloody messes, in fact it takes a lot of work to make it that bad. And the whole idea of democratic politics is to allow change to occcur peacefully. The problem in US politics is that it has become so corrupt that that "normal" sort of change and adaptation is not occurring. All of my life I have been watching politicians getting elected on the basis of promises that they have no intention of keeping, even intending to do fully the opposite of what they promised. Who can forget Nixon the peacemaker? Not that that is something we particularly invented.

[swilton]

10. Second Time This Was Posted

Sorry I can't find the link to the other post where there were numerous comments most disagreeing with the author, i.e., wondering what rose colored glasses he was looking through or what Harry Truman he was referring to.

The fact that Rahm Emanuel's brother had to write this speaks to the desperate links the Administration must go to to try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

[swilton]

11. Same article/other discussion

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9607740