Obama: half a postmortem

Two articles involving Obama have been discussed in the left blogs in the last week. One was a relatively old, 10/20/2009 by David Bromwich in The London Review of Books and the other by Matt Taibbi on Dec 09, 2009 in the Rolling Stones.

Taibbi is one of best investigative reporter the US has. He doesn't beat around the bush and gets to the jugular very fast. We all wish we had more journalists and media resembling Taibbi. I haven't read Bromwich before and know nothing about him. His piece, called Obama's Delusion, presents excellent analysis, good writing and wide knowledge of US politics.

Despite all that, I find a major fault with the two pieces of writing. The case against Taibbi is easier to explain. His piece goes into the finest points of forming of Obama's treasury department. The department that turns out to represent Wall Street instead of work for the American people. The point, however, is that we all know it and even more. Even The Nation when endorsing Obama at the beginning of the primaries in 2008 said that Obama is too close to Wall Street. Putting it very simply, the formation of treasury really doesn't matter. Obama was and is the person responsible for screwing the American people while doing his best to help his Wall Street brethren. Thus Taibbi's piece is flatly pointless.

Bromwich shows Obama's delusions on health care, Gitmo, stimulus, etc. We know it, we see it daily. Also Bromwich provides a good story, the story is old, it's being written in the papers and blogs every day, so it's a good story we have no use for. At the same time, Bromwich elaborates on Obama's strange political machination. We read about his started agendas but leaving them, we hear about the health care summer fiasco, and, a must for any European lefty publication, a long knock at Israel not doing what's good for Obama.

What is missing here is a conclusion, which Bromwich seems to try to escape: as a politician Obama is inept, somewhat of bum and unrealistic.

There are several mistakes in the article as well. Major among them is the claim that Clinton brought about the "repeal of welfare." That is wrong, Clinton changed welfare. Welfare was changed not only because of the Republicans. It was a dysfunctional system that the Democrats didn't want to change despite its enormous damaging impact on the people who needed it.

What does it take for writers not to make terrible mistakes?

Thus, Bromwich article ends up missing a major point and repeating for the thousand time another.