Obama is creating the American near equivelent of a National Unity Government

[Tom Rinaldo]

He hasn't moved to the center, he has moved the center to him. 8 years of George W. Bush's Administration has progressively deepened a national crisis on every front. With challenges as severe as those which we now face, the greatest degree of unity that America can muster without sacrificing a vision for a better more just and peaceful future, is what we now need to forge. Obama has been masterful so far in walking that line essentially perfectly. He fears no one's opinions, he is intimidated by no one's talents.

Not all times place a premium on the need to project national unity, these times do. Yes we need change, real change, desperately; but we need the American people behind that change. 53% of the vote is a near landslide in American politics, but 53% of voters by itself does not represent the type of unity Americans now need in these times. The most important first step is confidence, and with the administration that Obama is forming he is spreading confidence that the best and brightest among us have a seat at his table helping plot America's course through troubled waters. Make no mistake, his is a Democratic Administration, filled for the most part with a broad range of leading Democrats. But by avoiding an overt ideological cast, he allows Americans of other political persuasions to relate to the wisdom of the sheer talent he is assembling.

Eight years, two terms, is a long time. Now Obama has moved the center toward him, later he will move it left. How far left I am uncertain of, but the direction seems sure.

[Tinksrival]

1. From your lips to.............

God, I love to hear your brain talk Tom!

It's a new day, new world.

:hi:

[Radical Activist]

2. "Unity government" is an interesting way of looking at it.

I think you're right. And the left is still represented in the foreign policy team by Susan Rice and Obama himself.

[Tom Rinaldo]

3. I expect a denser seeding of progressives at lower profile layers of his Administration

By Obama's second term many of them will move up to top leadership positions. Let's see how well my crystal ball is working, lol.

[Shiver]

5. *laughs*

As I stated directly below, that's what I think is going to happen as well. The lower levels of the Administration and White House staff/advisers slip past the media, as they are not 'high-profile Cabinet posts'.

[Radical Activist]

24. That wouldn't surprise me at all.

I may be wrong about Rice being liberal but that's my impression. If so, slipping in a real liberal with some high profile moderates and a Republican is a smart way to avoid criticism from the press for making a liberal pick.

[Shiver]

4. I've been formulating a similar theory for some time now....

By moving the center to him and then to the left, various liberal and progressive issues will be seen, by the people, as coming not form the 'scary liberal side', but from the comfortable center. Appointing a Cabinet made of many centrists would aid in this idea - after all, if a "centrist" administration is advocating universal health care, equal rights, etc, then it can't be as leftist as the Republicans would lead you to believe.

This works with the other idea I've been floating - also a part of the developing theory - in regards to the appointments being made. While the Cabinet are more centrist/center-right, the advisers that don't require Senate confirmation - White House staff and the like - can lean more progressive and slip under the radar.

Moving the center also puts the Republicans more obviously on the fringe :evilgrin

[Tom Rinaldo]

7. Yes, we are thinking along the same lines

I was mulling over thoughts for a much longer OP along those lines, about how progressive change can realistically come to America. Once upon a time liberal views were respected in America. We are travelling through the points that seperate a past and future embrace of that world view, and leaving Republicans who knee jerk reject out in the cold as a result.

[Shiver]

9. I keep starting then stopping an OP...

...putting together the entire theory I've been working. Only reason I haven't yet, I think, is because I can't seem to get all the thoughts in coherent order - and when I do, someone has already posted something that contains at least a portion of what I was thinking.

[BeyondGeography]

6. "He hasn't moved to the center, he has moved the center to him."

Great line. True, too.

K&R

[Ichingcarpenter]

10. That's how Reagan got his Democrats and Independents

He moved them to the right, I see Obama moving
the populous to the left.

Nice Post by the OP.

[Political Tiger]

22. I agree!

That is a great line!

[Radical Activist]

25. I remember making a similar argument in the primary

when people were concerned about Obama's talk of unity. It's Obama's SOP.

[grantcart]

8. succinct and well said

He also is going BIG.


He is going for big assets, big ideas and big solutions - all of which requires more unity for passage.

[pgh_dem]

11. Also, John Kerry is working behind the scenes with lawyers, helping the recount in Ohio.

You're kidding yourself.

This is unity between the 'moderates' and the Republicans. If there is any perceptible movement to the left, it's only because the Bush administration buried the needle on the right side for 8 straight years.

"Change back" is a better motto than "Get Even More Psychotic", but I'm not going to pretend this is an administration interested in anything more ambitious than stabilizing a deteriorating country.

President Obama probably made good choices putting all these Clinton people (who have nothing but derision for the 'Wellstone'-type Democrats) back into power is that they had some idea what was going on when everything was taken out of their hands and set on fire by the Bush administration.

They're going to save the banks and the major industries, and keep the country from going bankrupt, and (with any luck) contain the insanity in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Hoping for more than that is just daydreaming.

[leftstreet]

13. "Change Back"

You're right.

[Sunnyshine]

12. K&R - I think you are really on to something truthful here. Great OP, thank you TR.

Keep pulling on the rope until we shift that knot towards progress.

[Hawkowl]

14. Weakness

I'm going to say that all this team of rivals, unity government etc. is not because Obama is a strong leader, but because he is weak. Lincoln's team of rivals was necessary because the country was coming apart at the seams and Lincoln barely won at all with only 39% of the popular vote. National Unity governments are formed by parliamentary governments when no single party wins an outright majority. These types of unity governments are formed because the leaders have no choice and are virtually powerless without strong allies.

Obama has a clear mandate from the people for change, electoral and popular vote landslides, coupled with unprecedented power of the modern presidency-a virtual dictatorship, and yet a very timid, tepid, tentative approach, at least in terms of appointments. In fact the moderate left of the Democratic party, the Ted Kennedy wing, is poorly represented. It is much more a centrist government rather than a unity government. That's a sign of weakness.

Or as a lot of people suspect, these appointments represent Obama's true political leanings, namely DLC/ or old school moderate republican. I'm beginning to think of Obama as just a different flavor of Colin Powell, but maybe, just maybe, he is simply clearing the decks before some monumental reforms. We'll see, but I'm not hopeful at all. Then again, Obama was my second to the last choice among the candidates, right behind Hillary, and I do not expect a lot of progressive change until the status quo policies continue to fail and Obama is forced back to, "gasp", a little bit left of Eisenhower.

Yes, that is what I hope for. An Eisenhower type presidency where the top income tax bracket was 91%, corporations paid two thirds of all income taxes, a much smaller military, ironclad pensions and a strong labor movement. I watched a speech by Truman the other day and he was demanding universal, single-payer health care 60 years ago, so I'm not hoping for that with a weak "unity" approach.

We will get more progressive once the unemployment rate hits 10% next year. He will be forced left as Roosevelt was. Instead of studying Lincoln, he should be studying both Roosevelts.

[Tom Rinaldo]

16. One reason why I mildly tilted toward Clinton over Obama for most of the primaries

was my concern that Obama would go further than I was comfortable with in attempting to create a post partisan political climate in America, a tendency which I thought was slightly less pronounced with Hillary Clinton, if for no other reason than that I knew that Republicans would leave no time or space available for post partisanship with a second Clinton Presidency. But Hillary is also a bit feistier than Obama and I factored that into it also. So I have been on both sides of the fence with this. I thought a Hillary Clinton presidency would ultimately be more polorizing than an Obama presidency, and that offered some real advantages in the area of potential clean breaks from centrism - after it "ceased to hold", even though I viewed Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton as being very similar on issues - neither exsctly a classic progressive.

But I failed to adaquately factor in the natural reassuring appeal that Barqack Obama has been able to project across previous Party lines. If he can bring the center firmly into his tent, that opens up a possibility for him to slowly start moving that tent, occupants and all, in a direction of his choosing as long as he keeps it feeling OK to those inside it.

Worst case we end up with a clear improvement over the disasterous incompetency of the George W. Bush Administration with Barack Obama as President. Best case? Barack subtly transforms the political landscape, making what once seem radical to many feel like simple common sense to most.

Meanwhile the U.S. in in a real crisis. We, like the global environment, are at a real tipping point. Either we rally our resourses now to change course or we will find ourselves soon without sufficient resources left to adaquately change course even if we try to. There is something to be said for tapping top level talent at a time when there is no longer any room for error. That has always been the strongest argument behind every national unity government.

[alwysdrunk]

35. The weakness is in the Country not in the President

No different from any ideologue, dreaming your liberal dreams of 90% taxes, while completely ignoring the reality of the state of our union.

Mandate or not, this country needs fixing. In order to fix it we need as many people as possible pushing in the same direction towards put in policies that will repair our damaged economy and our foreign relationships.

Hoping for our failure so we are "forced" to the left. Thanks for your support.

[gravity]

15. Governing from the center builds credibility

If you get the center to trust you, they won't fear your moves to the left. Obama is a smart man and has a long term vision for this country.

Contrast this from fighting partisan battles at the beginning without a large support from the middle. You can win a few battles, but you drain all your political capital to get anything else done.

[BelgianMadCow]

33. word. nt

[Cleita]

17. Wouldn't that result in a one party government?

History would tell us that's not such a good idea.

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. Actually, no.

A national unity government can evolve (or devolve) into a one party government, but in the classic sense they are always of limited duration, created during difficult times either to bridge the gap until new elections deliver a clear verdict on what direction a nation will be taking (in cases where no one has a mandate to rule), or to temporarily put aside or find compromises on areas of disagreement while enthusiastically joining forces to jointly pursue very high common priotites that almost all agree must be dealt with quickly and effectively.

When emergencies begin to receed then differences begin to emerge, and the prior lead party does not always come out on top - ask Churchill's ghost about that. Other times though the lead party comes out smelling like a relative rose getting most of the credit for everyone's efforts.

[EFerrari]

18. I don't think I understand what you mean by "he moved the center to him".

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. Lured them into his tent - or onto his bus .

Let's say he just drove that bus to near the center of the field. If its seats are comfortable, if good snacks are served, and a good movie is playing on the videos, folks will stay on that bus even if it slowly starts to roll. Obama isn't overtly peddling a centrist ideology - if he was I would say he was moving to the center. He is appealing to people with a style of measured leadership that many centrists are comfortable with without having first pledged to pursue clearly centrist policies. That's why I said he moved the center to him.

Obviously (at least to me) Obama isn't a clear cut leftist by any means, so I find his policies tend to be central left, sometimes more of one or the other. But he is managing to appeal to many people who are dead center and even center right.

[EFerrari]

23. I see. Thanks.

Obama sounds very much like a centrist to me and always has. The surprise isn't that he appeals to the center right but that he appealed to so many liberals, imho. On the other hand, we are the red headed children of American politics. The Republicans slobber over their base. Ours gets shunned, maligned and browbeaten as a matter of course.

lol

[leftstreet]

19. Central Leadership Corporation

A DUer coined that phrase, but I can't remember who it was.

[WinkyDink]

26. What he is, is a better chess player than he's been given credit for. Heh.

[DeepModem Mom]

27. K&R

[firedupdem]

28. Great Post! I think you summed it up perfectly. n/t

[RollWithIt]

29. Bravo... you are 125% correct....and then some... nt

[FrenchieCat]

30. The debate that folks are having about Obama being a "centrist"

is going to sound ridiculous quite soon.

A man who saw poverty first hand in Indonesia, is of minority status, helped organize the poor on the South Side of Chicago, attended Trinity Church for 20 years, married a Robinson originating out of South Carolina, attended Columbia and Harvard (two of the oldest established liberal universities in the United States), who not only represented some of the underserved as a Civil Rights Attorney but taught Constitutional law, ran project Vote out of Chicago to get Mosley-Braun Elected (first Black female Senator), chose to lives in Hide Park, represented the South Side of Chicago for 8 years in the State house, has never been a member of the DLC, and was adamantly against the Iraq war, is simply not a Centrist.

Meanwhile he has appointed to high ranking cabinet/advisory positions, 4 African-Americans, 7 women, one GLBT and a couple of Jews ...when he has only made about 15 appointments or so.

If he's got folks fooled, well that's mighty artful of him. Means he's playing a great game of political poker thus far.

[ConsAreLiars]

31. I think it is more a matter of "community organizing" than left-center-right.

The US national "community" is even more heavily dominated by anti-people moneyed interests than cities or neighborhoods. But getting the rip-off convenience and booze store owners and landlords to sign on to neighborhood improvement projects improves the odds of success, and is possible because they all expect things to get better.

Creating a coalition involving US Imperialist interests and the people of the US that will improve the condition of the people of the planet is way, way, way tougher. But if that is his goal (I am agnostic on that), he can't get from here to there without assuring the Monsters that they will benefit by being inside rather than being in opposition. He's saidrepeatedly and clearly that he will set the direction, and even the Monsters seem to accept that, since the neocon crazies and the disaster they have created scares even them.

[Hekate]

32. Hubby, a chess player, keeps saying Obama is playing chess here. Thanks for what you said...

This is an interesting thread and I hope to return to read more slowly.

Hekate

:kick:

[Undercurrent]

34. Thank you for

articulating what I've been thinking! Good post.