Why Can't President Obama Govern the Way He Camapigned?

Barack Obama and his team ran possibly the most effective campaign in American political history. It was in many ways a grassroots campaign, relying solid local organization, small contributions, decentralized and democratic social networking. His message was decidedly different, substantive, seemingly progressive and more responsive to the needs, desires and hopes of ordinary people. He energized and engaged people beyond the Democrats’ traditional base.

Yet, a year after his landslide victory, he seems unable or unwilling to govern in a way that is consistent with both the concept and substance on which he campaigned. Building consensus has morphed into repeated cave-ins to the power brokers of the status quo. Seemingly progressive concepts (“The only way to get to universal coverage is ingle payer) have been so totally compromised away that there is almost no reform in the healthcare bills now nearly eertain to pass and to create more problems than it solves. Maybe the financial bailouts were necessary, but where is the strong medicine needed to reign in the too-big-to-fail robber barons of Wall Street.

A year after liberals, progressives and persons of color celebrated an historic election, the financial, multi-national corporations and insurance executives who hold the real power in this country are firmly in control, not worried by the President’s program. The oligarchs of the Corporateocracy are, well fed and secure.

I recognize that politics is the art of compromise. I don’t expect an overnight revolution. Nor do I want to fall in with those who have declared a presidency ‘failed’ after less than a year. But for this veteran of the ‘60s failed revolution, and 21st century Progressive, I fear that this presidency is teetering on the edge of a failure to launch.