Second Try

So, I've had calls from some quarters--one quarter at least--to start up the blog again. Lord knows there's enough news out of the States to set me off on a rant or two. Financial reform...the Supreme Court's continuing campaign to gift wrap American electoral politics in their entirety and hand them over to corporations and rich individuals...the BP spill...the languishing economy and the vanishing likelihood of any further stimulus...this limp-wristed energy bill Obama was out shilling for last night which is sadly probably the best thing that can make it out of the Senate right now, which is to say the best that can make it out of the Senate ever. (Does anyone think our legislative gridlock will get better after November?)

I've been watching Jon Stewart's Daily Show here on Australia's ABC2. It's shown every night at 7PM on a five or six hour delay. Tonight Mr. Stewart cast Barack Obama as Frodo Baggins, a good man corrupted by power, for Obama's failure to dismantle Bush's extralegal anti-terror apparatus. He has been egually as harsh on Obama for his apparently easygoing response to the oil spill. Let me say two things in response to Mr. Stewart, my fellow William & Mary alumnus: First, just as many of Stewart's conservative critics argue, he has a tendency to get high up on a moral high horse, but then the instant he encounters any push-back he claims that he's just an entertainer, that nothing he says has any serious political content. Second, Stewart, like many of us, asks too much of the president, of any president.

Obama's ability to fix the oil mess is limited. Even more importantly, his ability to get meaningful reform through Congress is even more severely limited. I'm not exactly jumping for joy over Obama's performance this first year and a half of his presidency, but I rather imagine it's in the nature of things for a left-leaning Democrat such as myself to be disappointed by my Democratic presidents. By 2000 Clinton had me thinking along with Ralph Nader that there was no meaningful distinction between a prospective Al Gore presidency and a George W Bush presidency. (I voted for Gore anyway in the belief that a Nader presidency would be worse than either of the alternatives.) What has me more frustrated than Obama is our feckless legislative branch. The Senate needs to be shaken out of its stupor. So what if the Dems have lost their filibuster-proof majority. Bring the legislation forward anyway! Make the bastards filibuster! Make the Republicans stand up all night and all day reading the goddamn phone book into the Congressional Record and then have to go home to their constituencies and explain why they acted to obstruct the next defense appropriation or whatever other bit of crucial business their heroic blockade wouldn't let through.