What happened to Drew Westen? And by that I mean as a child.
What in hell would cause a nominal progressive to write such a bilious, lopsided, grossly unfair attack piece about a Democratic President?
If you read Westen's piece, which I don't recommend doing on a full stomach. You will find that his substantive critique of the President is limited to a cursory rehearsal of the standard grievances that one could compile by spending about five minutes fo research over at FireDogLake.
The Bulk of Westen's critique focuses on the President's supposed failure of the gauzier aspects of leadership - the ability to tell a good story, the ability to be tough and confrontational.
The whole article is an exercise in mushy-headed, petulant, nasty character assassination that unabashedly recycles old Republican attacks.
What saddens and/or angers me is the extent to which it appears to have resonated with a lot of progressives. Particularly people on this site for whom I have had some respect.
I don't have a lot of time right now, so I am just going to highlight one of the most grossly unfair parts of the attack and link to a couple of other good blog posts ripping this piece of crap apart.
Here is the paragraph, toward the end of the piece, that most made my blood boil:
A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.
The arrogance and condescension of this statement is just breathtaking. Obama "accomplished very little before becoming President"? "[H]e had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography"?
This crap is just laughable in it's pure, unbridled, gratuitous malice. I'm sure Westen chose to highlight his failure to publish as a professor beause it's the only realm of accomplishment where he compares favorably with the President. And why do you suppose the President failed to publish while at the University of Chicago? Could it be because he was busy heading up a massive voter registration project that helped change the face of Chicago and Illinois politics? Coudl it be that he remained active in community organizing? Or that he was working at a small law firm specializing in civil rights and community development? Or that he was busy running for, and then doing his job as, a member of the Illinois senate and then running for Congress in 2000 and then the Senat in 2004? What, he couldn't be bothered to squeeze in some time to write a law review piece on modern developments in riparian rights?
And I'm not unfairly cherry-picking here. The whole damn article is equally petty and caustic.
Anyway, Andrew Sprung and Andrew Sullivan (I know, Sullivan is, gasp!, a conservative; I have enough trust in my own judgment to take good sense from whatever source it comes - so shoot me) both have excellent, lengthy blog posts on the topic that give Westen's piece (of what I shall not say) exactly the respect it deserves:
Sullivan:
What Westen seems to have wanted was the Democratic version of George W. Bush, contemptuous of his opponents, ruthless in his often unconstitutional determination to get his agenda through, divisive and polarizing. But Obama would not have won election on those grounds and did not have a mandate for that. He was elected as a moderate Democrat, prepared to engage any pragmatic solution to obvious problems, while not splitting an already polarized country even further.
That he has tried to do, against an opposition party that decided to double down on polarization, on politics as warfare, on politics as a game, and bereft of any ideas except taking us back to before the New Deal. What has to be defeated is not just their agenda, but their modus operandi. Only by patiently out-lasting and out-arguing them will Obama be able to do this. And it says a lot about the utopian left that they do not see the wisdom and responsibility of this strategy.
Sprung:
In his denouement, Westen stoops to unfounded allegations about character and motive that almost amount to character assassination: Obama's stories lack villains because he has to keep raising campaign dollars; he has pivoted toward deficit reduction to appease "independent" voters; it is impossible to know what he really believes on core issues. There are elements of truth in all these allegations -- as there are for any national politician who manages to get elected and re-elected. In fact, though, Obama has always been perfectly consistent and up-front about his pragmatism, his willingness to try what works, his acknowledgment that "the other side may sometimes have a point." Many of his positions have always been to the right of those of the Democratic base. He said during the transition period in fall 2008 that the long-term deficit was the problem that kept him up at night; on tax increases, he has hewed to his 2008 promise to raise taxes only on the wealthiest 2%; he disappointed followers with his support of the revamped FISA law in 2008; and he has always been against "dumb wars," not "all wars."
Obama is indeed a Rorschach that's hard for supporters to assess. But so is any president in mid-stream, especially during a time of protracted crisis. Westen's stark narrative satisfies his own preference for tales with unambiguous villains. But it's really of no help to any progressive struggling in good faith to understand Obama.
Okay, rant over, in coments please either let me know what you think makes Drew Westen remotely qualified to pass judgment on Barack Obama's accomplishments, character or progressive bona fides, or, if you prefer, let me know what the hell happened to Westen in childhood that causes him as an adult to throw a tantrum about not getting the bedtime story he wanted.