Have We Stopped Believing In Obama?

Yes

This morning's Sunday Edition of The New York Times has sparked controversy with a scathing, yet solid, piece, "What Happened to Obama?" in which Dr. Drew Westin essentially asks why President Obama hasn't made the stand that Americans had hoped for. Time magazine blogger Joe Klein, supporting Westin's piece today, noted that it's time we discuss Obama's "curiously unsatisfying presidency". Are left-leaning Americans experiencing the aftermath of a let down that is only the product of having such high expectations or is Obama truly leaving his ideals, and ours, behind in trying too hard to compromise? Have the left lost their infamous 'hope'?

"....the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise," Westin says in his NY Times editorial, referencing how the president is partial to paraphrasing “the arc of history” from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice".

"It does not bend," Westin continues, "when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically."

"It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks."

"Talk to leading Republicans and Democrats in Washington in the aftermath of the debt battle, and the president is pictured as an inconsistent communicator, an inexperienced negotiator, a leader who most Republicans believe, and many Democrats fear, shies from a tough fight," a column by Bloomberg News executive editor Albert R. Hunt declares.

"If the debt-ceiling fiasco was high drama," Hunt says, "try to picture the situation 16 months from now, when the consequences of Congress’s failure to reach a consensus on paring back entitlements and increasing taxes will be apparent. The result: huge spending cutbacks are scheduled to kick in, more than $3.5 trillion of the Bush tax cuts expire and it will be necessary to raise the debt ceiling again -- all at the same time.

"The stakes escalated with the Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating on Aug. 5. Clearly a blow to the president, it could boomerang on Republicans if they are seen as the impediment to rectifying the situation."

Was his handling of the debt-ceiling crisis the straw the broke the camel's back for Obama supporters? After plainly stating Wednesday's episode of MSNBC's The Ed Show that a Republican can take back the Oval Office in 2012 due to the downtrodden economy, Bill Maher reiterated on Friday that “the magic is gone” and asked his HBO show's panel if liberals were starting to have “buyer’s remorse” about the President. Could that really be the case?

Casandra Armour

Have We Stopped Believing In Obama?

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