I see the limits of the man, because I have limits. That's my confession.
From "Tough Choices: How Making Decisions Tires Your Brain", Scientific American (2008):
The human mind is a remarkable device. Nevertheless, it is not without limits. Recently, a growing body of research has focused on a particular mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When you focus on a specific task for an extended period of time or choose to eat a salad instead of a piece of cake, you are flexing your executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort-you have to resist the temptation to let your mind wander or to indulge in the sweet dessert. It turns out, however, that use of executive function—a talent we all rely on throughout the day—draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be severely hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity.
If we don't appreciate how the limitations of a single human being affect the capacity of the presidency, then the assessment of our candidates' performance will always yeild dissapointment. And that constant dissapoinment regarding Obama is the basis of a loser attitude: always whining about what should have been. This site reeks of it.
Look, Obama is not going to bat 1.000. I run an organization with five distinct projects going at the moment. I've basically stretched my brain to its processing capacity limits, and I have to accept the fact that my effort on each of those is not what it could be. Each project gets roughly 20% of what could be. So the mental challenge of guiding these efforts forward at the same time is terrifying at times. I have moments of sheer panic where I don't know why I'm doing a certain project, or even the whole thing. I have to grapple with the fact that I may have to kill some of my babies to save the others. Sometimes I just want to walk off the job and go live under a palm tree for a year.
But at least in my situation I have some effective control- I can hire/fire people and directly adjust my budget. I don't, for example, have to allow small-minded idiots elected by other small-minded idiots to run my HR and accounting departments. Yet every night I go to bed thinking "I don't earn enough for this crap."
So it just sounds awful to me to really hear (i.e. not just read) the sort of mob whining that goes on here on Kos after an Obama compromise. It really reads like a bunch of adolescents who think every problem is easier to solve than it actually is- that they're entitled to an impossibly perfect outcome. It bodes poorly for the site's relevance, for this movement and the country as a whole. This community really needs to ask itself in these situations: "Did Obama just jump the shark, or did we? How having these nattering nabobs of negativity within our own movement help?" There's a sizeable crowd here that throws a giant fit each time they don't get what they want...instead of knuckling down and trying harder.
Could Obama have negotiated harder on the budget? Certainly. But there is an opportunity cost for absolutely every little the president allocates his time to engage- even filling in his March Madness bracket. If he had gotten the debt issue just right by us, he might not have had as much time to direct our resources to help prevent a greater meltdown at Fukushima, or to broker an unprecedented global action against a tyrant under the right-to-protect doctrine ti prevent the slaughter of tens of thousands in eastern Libya...or all the other Paul Bunyan-esque stuff he's been doing lately. Dude doesn't even have a Blue Ox to help him out.
Have you ever considered what Obama's workday is like? He's way beyond walking and chewing gum at the same time- his dashboard is lit up like a Christmas tree. He's surely wrestling with an untold number of global and national calamities that we don't even know about yet. Then there are the ones we do know about. His foreign policy horizon is packed with radical uncertainty, global instability and outright war on multiple continets. Politically he is hampered by corporate media and a broken campaign system. I mean, do all the whiners out there even realize what the Citizens United decision did to us last cycle??? And now you want to pile on Obama???
The president is ideologically diluted by very real crises, not because he is weak. And unfortunately many on Kos are deluded by political fantasies that somehow this is the time to "go for it all". That is what makes Obama weak: the naivete of his base.
I GET that there is an obligatory grumble when we don't get what we want. This budget is not what I wanted either. But I can say that without blaming Obama and going all ad hominem. I expect some doubters and reasonable objections, but for the comment section to be packed with post after post comprising a litany of griping, pining, moaning, kvetching and blaming. It's unbecoming. As my wife once said to me when I really needed it: "Buck. The. F^@&. Up."
Nobody knew what was going to happen when Obama laid out his plans for change before the crash. It is inane to hold him to account for specific campaign promises after what amounted to a global black swan event. When the economy imploded, he had to defer on pretty much everything on his agenda and focus his maximum personal effort on minimizing economic fallout. For that he was punished- by Kossacks and the Tea Partiers alike. Now of course he can't take credit for what helped avert, because evidently that's too damned abstract for the bulk of this country to comprehend.
How soon we forget how bad that was. And how easily we expect our victories to come, and our success to last.
From my view he's on his way to becoming the greatest president of our time, not that it's been a great run lately. If we'd just stop sniping long enough to genuinely support the man at times like this when he needs it most, he might be the best president ever. Just imagine a second term, one that doesn't start with the worst economic calamity in generations? Then we can shoot the moon. That will be the time to go for it all.
I still hope for that.
And I've seen absolutely zero here or anywhere else that suggests any better ideas for who can lead this country right now. As the commercial says: lead, follow or get out of the way. For me, Obama is leading and I continue to follow. Do I feel disappointment this first term? Yes, but no more than Obama does I'm sure. Am I ready to go to the mat for him in 2012? You. Better. Believe. It.
So let's all buck up now, shall we?