Take charge, make change

Obama inspired with the idea of something new, summed up in his ‘change’ mantra, whose appeal I finally absorbed although the let’s-hold-hands-and-sing (with the Republicans) subtext, not so much. Plus, there’s an inherent contradiction between the two tendencies in his rhetoric because if anything represents the tired old Washington of the Clinton and Bush years, it’s letting the hard-liners of the party of Limbaugh get their way over and over and over.

So Obama’s olive branches and pattycake peace feelers to the guys who got us into this mess aren’t too persuasive for many of us who think what the country needs is less centrism and a larger dollop of partisan warfare. People say they hate the mud-slinging, but they fool themselves. (They also say they hate cheap infotainment and annoying advertisements while continuing to buy all the products scarf up the news about Britney.) There’s something appealing about a tough, consistent and even uncompromising message that rallies your supporters and makes the intransigent opposition pay a price.

Clinton the triangulator already tried the MOR approach, giving ground wherever the conservative machinery geared up to oppose him. His reward was a quick loss of his congressional majority in 1990 and vicious hatred of his entire family fanned by the reactionary base. Obama’s first two weeks are repeating the pattern.

On a brighter note there are positive signs of prudence from Obama on the Afghanistan/Pakistan debacle, about which various commentators have issued their cautions. How easily we forget that the Soviet Union hurried to its demise via the Afghan graveyard. After a lot of talk about a Bush-lite ‘surge’ of forces there, Obama reportedly asked his military experts for a winning strategy for the region and surprise, surprise, they couldn’t lay out one.

I don’t pretend to any expertise on that part of the world, but from my casual reading over the years it seems pretty obvious that you don’t win friends and influence people by bombing and strafing civilians from the air (as O himself criticized during the campaign), backing a hopelessly corrupt regime in Kabul, pretending to fight the opium traffic while allowing the politically connected to keep growing theirs, and turning a blind eye to the nefarious doings of Pakistani intelligence that secretly maintains its alliance with the resurgent Taliban in expectations that the Americans eventually will leave.

W and the neocons seriously undermined American influence and our safety with their arrogant, wacko schemes, and O has the chance to change course. To do so, he has to, um . . . change course. We’re waiting.