The Invisible Counterpoint

While there's no way to know whether Hillary Clinton would have hung tougher than President Obama with those recalcitrant Republicans, here's a safe bet -- her summer reading list would have included a few more women authors than his. Obama opened his Martha's Vineyard vacation by purchasing Daniel Woodrell's "The Bayou Trilogy" and Ward Just's "Rodin's Debutante." He'd already packed novels by David Grossman and Abraham Verghese, along with Isabel Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns," a nonfiction account of black migration from the American South. (Some reports also had Obama carrying Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" and Emma Donoghue's novel "Room.") That would make Obama's reading 70 percent male -- which is actually a better male-female ratio than the past. [. . .] Now the fact that the president of the United States apparently doesn't read women wr...

As liberals rail against the debt limit deal and Barack Obama’s choices leading up to what they see as an epic capitulation , it seems fair to wonder if a different president -- someone with, say, a reputation for toughness and savvy and with a history of combating Republican obstructionists -- could have produced a better outcome. Someone like, oh, I don't know ... Hillary Clinton? That, after all, was the premise of Clinton's Democratic primary campaign in 2008 -- that Obama might be able to inspire the masses, but that only she had the experience and know-how to get results. And now here's Obama seemingly validating it -- and hardly for the first time in his presidency. Can we now safely say that Democrats made the wrong choice three years ago? The short answer is: No. Believe it or not, the best evidence is that if Clinton were now the president -- or, for that matter, if any other mainstream Democrat were -- the differences would be very small. (Jonathan Berns...

"In modern democratic nations, we usually don't actually kill our leaders; we periodically throw them out of office and replace them with revitalized substitutes. But the decline in potency of the leader, his inexorable abandonment of us as we grow still is felt today. This is because the leader is a less a figure of authority than he is a delegate, someone who tells us to do what we tell him we want done, someone who "takes the blame" for us. As poison container for our dissociated alter, the leader is expected to absorb our violent feelings without collapsing. Many societies actually designate "filth men" to help the leader with this task, relatives who exchange blood with him so they can "intercept" the poisonous feelings of the people directed at him. In modern nations, cabinet members are our "filth men," and are regularly sacrificed when the leader is under attack." (Llooyd DeMause, Psychogenic Theory of History) ...

So what are we making of the spill? Is the current criticism of Obama, his (emotional) distance, his seeming compliance with BP, 
sign that he is doing what we want of him: namely, demonstrate that those who express their desperation and huge need will largely be ignored? The spill is helping create what we most want: more and more of the desperate and despairing, to feel "it" (i.e., emotions associated with our own early
neglect) so we
don't have to. The spills "soiled" joins Afghanistan's "chewed"? He ignored the far left, and they screamed turncoat! He displeased the far right, and they tea-bagged. He seems remote at a time when some of the poorest (i.e., most needy) regions of the U.S. (the gulf region) are looking at apparent (at least) dissolution of a whole reason for existence. 
He's a keeper. Note: Originally posted at realpsychohistory (13 June 2010)

Talk about snakebit: Peggy Noonan chose Friday to publish a column writing off President Obama off as an unlucky president, comparing him to Jimmy Carter, just when his presidency has a little spring back in its step. Its title is luscious: " A Snakebit President : Americans want leaders on whom the sun shines." The sun seemed to shine on Obama this week. It's true his Tuesday night speech wasn't his best, but that's because it lacked the news he was able to reveal Wednesday: That BP had agreed to create a $20 billion escrow fund to compensate the victims of its Gulf oil disaster, to have it administered by the tough Kenneth Feinberg of the 9/11 fund, and also to put off paying shareholder dividends through the end of the year. And on Thursday, Obama got relief from the harsh, unnatural media glare in the wake of the disaster, which had landed upon him in the absence of any other visible hero or villain in the mess, when Tony Hayward testified before the Hou...

You can call that pragmatism in the face of harsh political reality if you like. That's not a bad description. But the truth is that there was never any point in time when getting cap-and-trade passed was going to be anything but extraordinarily difficult. It still will be now, if Obama tries. A White House that gave up on the issue when it seemed too hard and came haltingly back when it seems marginally easier isn't exactly the picture of idealism Obama painted when he talked about how his presidency would be remembered. At least on this issue, I thought we were getting a big president. (Gabriel Winant, “The medium-big president,” Salon, 15 June 2010) - - - - - Unresolved Parental Issues I am becoming increasingly convinced that large swathes of the US media have unresolved parental issues. Why the obsession with incessantly noting that "Daddy" is not acting like we want him to, not matter what he does? (Phyllis Beck Kritek, response to post, “The medium-big...

There are two pressing reasons that I find Obama's current stasis so worrisome. One is that we're at a dangerous time, given the world economy, and on the right, Obama's election has worsened a 20-year pattern of Republican obstruction and destruction (and it's got an undercurrent of hate and demonization that can't be denied.) At the same time, Obama has an incredible moment to articulate what Democratic leadership stands for: Improving the lives of ordinary Americans, protecting the country from the unbridled, deregulated dangerous corporate excess, and moving boldly on problems, like climate change, that require boldness and leadership. Between the BP oil disaster and the near-collapse of the world economy thanks to the finance industry – both have in common a corporate arrogance that big risks to make big money were worth taking, no matter the impact on the rest of us – Obama has the perfect context for laying out why government matters, and why Democrats run ...