I am a fan of your writing and rarely comment here but this post has sincerely left me baffled. I may not be 100% happy with everything Obama has done but your 'proof' that everyone is disappointed with Obama seems flimsy. I volunteered in 3 different states for Obama, went door to door and am still pretty much in touch with everyone I worked with in the grassroots to get Obama elected. Not one of these people reflect this disappointment you speak of. I and most of the people I worked with did NOT want a GW Bush just in democratic clothing. Whoever thought Obama was that was simply projecting and did not pay attention to the election campaign. Obama is Obama and he is going to get things done his way. I guess if he were GW Bush we would have already gotten other things done? Think again. We are about to get a health Care bill other presidents did not even come close to so I am sticking to supporting his style and giving his administration a chance to get the work done. Also--way to propagate Fox News Talking Points--Black Jimmy Carter! Let's check back in June and see who is Jimmy carter then.

It's a tough situation because a lot of people I know are also really tired of "Blame Bush" talk, even though Obama isn't passed his first year and has already done some good.

It's not that Bush isn't really still to blame, either. The financial crisis is his. And how can Obama be "dithering" about Afghanistan when the previou administration should have had the problem well solved before a new president took office (did anyone think Afghanistan was going to be an 8-year plus occupation?)

Problem is, there's a lot of appetite on both the left and right to forget Bush entirely. Psychologically, we are repulsed by failure. We don't like to dwell on it. There's also a bias, both on the left and the right for Obama to "own" his presidency.

Obama is also not the type to blame the last guy. It doesn't suit Obama's character. He doesn't like to do it. He's definitely an alpha male.

He's also a snob in the best sense of the term. He won't get into a public argument with people he seems unworthy. This means the Sarah Palins of the world can take a lot of free shots because Obama doesn't see much point in debating them.

I still have some problems with the big guy. I hate the health care legislation and I find it hard to muster support for it. I think the stimulus was a bit botched, relying on a trickle down effect while people are the top of the economy are just hoarding the money. I don't want to send more troops to Afghanistan. So some of my enthusiasm is waning just because he's not doing what I would have him do.

I'm not disappointed yet, because (a) I knew he was pretty conciliatory (but also good at keeping the right wingnuts doing the circular firing squad thing, at the same time), and (b) I knew that any change would be very slow. I'll decide how disappointed I am in about another 2.5 years. :-)

The last that I knew, members of the Taliban happen to be citizens of Afghanistan.

Why oh why are we chasing ants on the other side of the world?

Does the Israeli government hold some sort of trump card against the U.S. government - if the latter should start thinking twice?

Are all Dem centrists nothing but shills for AIPAC?

"One friend said it best. "Would Sarah Palin and her minions be able to scream about the debt if Obama had made clear from day one who was responsible for it? Would they be able to yell about his 'dithering' on Afghanistan if he pointed out that Bush and Cheney's decision to fight in Iraq caused us to lose Afghanistan."

Your friend is quite naive if they think that facts will stop Sarah Palin and her right wing friends from spewing lies. Obama has made these points countless times during the campaign and after he got into office. And the polls show that most Americans have not forgotten who got us into the wars and the financial mess. It's the media and the Right who are in denial. They will be reminded soon enough. He is not going to spend everyday fighting off these attacks, he's not on the campaign trail anymore.

"Bottom line. Liberals want an administration that is the left wing equivalent of the Bush-Cheney administration, an administration that had principles and stuck to them (every one of them wrong) and knew the difference between friends and enemies."

Shaking my damn head. After watching this guy for 2 years and seeing how he was complimentary of his opponents, agreeing with some or part of their ideas, constantly talking about reaching across the aisle in bipartisanship, you all thought he was going to be the Left wing equivalent of W.? He spent a lot of time promising the American people that he would not act like W. The Left thought that was a lie? an act? I heard several people say that the Left was projecting, and they were quickly dismissed. It is now apparently true. So blame your unreasonable expectations, not Obama's performance for your disappointment.

"Why didn't Obama allow hearings on how we were lied and manipulated into Iraq and how Rumsfeld made the decision to let Osama slip away into Pakistan? Why do we never hear about how Bush converted Clinton's surplus into the worst deficit in history? Democrats kept winning for 20 years by referring to Hoover's depression. And yet Democrats today shrink from the idea of blaming the administration that give Clinton's surplus away to the ultra-rich?"

1. This was in the news, no one cared because they were worried about losing their homes and jobs. 2. People know, that's why Americans rejected the GOP and gave Dems the majority. 3. We need to focus on what the GOP is doing NOW, which is NOTHING.

I am not disappointed in Obama (surprise, surprise). He is a politician working with other politicians in Washington D.C. - this is not exactly a fertile ground for the revolutionary change that Liberals want. People like to make long lists of the promises Obama made, but fail to remember the warnings. Many times he said, Power does not concede easily, change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington (he wasn't talking about himself), change doesn't happen overnight, he might not get it done in his first year or his first term, there will be false starts, the hard work begins now, on and on and on. That wasn't a lie.

I am, however, very disappointed in the Left. Where is your fight? Why do you need the President to hold your hands or to inspire you? Why is the Right out organizing you? Is the possibility of President Sarah Palin not motivating enough? Or a president who will have to govern from the far right in order to stay in office? Forget helping Obama and making sure he gets reelected -it's not about him, I thought the Left was all about caring for the little guy, the middle class and the poor. Was that a lie? Did you only care about sticking it to right wingers who are 25%(or much less) of this country?

You have a Democrat in the White House. Take advantage. Get a new and EFFECTIVE stratergy for getting what you want from the White House. Stop demonizing his gatekeeper, Rahm. I just have to say that is a really really really foolish thing to do. Do not make an enemy out of the gatekeeper. Opportunity is banging on the door and you should not ignore it because it's not all of what you wanted. Get over it, get organized and get moving.

"Grow up!" Just what we need, another junior high principal weighing in on international affairs.

Grow up? Yeah, I did, forty years ago - at a firebase near the Cambodian border, you tiddly winks asshat.

Listening to the taped Oval Office conversations of LBJ which Moyers includes in his programe, it is so apparent that the one primary, chief consideration was (and remains) political necessity. Oh yes, the necessities of American politics. People must die so that one or another side prevails in Washington.

Nothing has changed, huh folks?

In light of the old joke about the issue of where does an elephant sit, just stop awhile to consider all of the minions in Washington so ready and willing to french any and all elephants of the political world. And on the other hand, what is the essential difference between being an elected elephant and frenching AIPAC?

The stench is always acute and one can smell them a block away.

I am also NOT disappointed in Obama.

I am disappointed in in the people who are now disappointed in him after stupidly expecting him to wave a magic wand and solve all their pet problems in flash.

Anyone who expected Obama to be a fighter as president did not do his/her homework on the man. Read his speeches, read his book, look at his track record from Harvard Law Review on. His MAIN cause has been compromise, getting people of different views to work together. A guy like Obama becomes president of a country roughly evenly divided between one party run by aggressive stubborn-as-hell unscrupulous hypocrite ignorance-worshippers, and a second party run by mealy-mouth flip-flopping feel-good utter cowards, what in blazes can you expect? That he will pour spinach down all the cowards' throats and turn them into Popeye with muscles bulging?

The U.S. Democratic Party of the last 10 years has been dominated by some of the most spineless wimps of all American history.

After barely winning the election in 2000 on popular votes, and much more barely losing it in the court-determined electoral college, these craven wishy-washers crumbled like wet noodles to support a tax cut for the rich based on sheer stupidity. Then they fell in like lemmings behind the idiocy of a "war on terror." Then in a crowning moment of supreme cowardice they rubberstamped the mad deceit-laden and incompetence-based rush into the quagmire of Iraq, an invasion breathtakingly obviously based on ANYTHING BUT the national interest and security of the country, and THEN sat on their quivering backsides and did not do a DAMN THING on Iraq EVEN after getting a Congressional majority in 2006.

Now Mr. Obama is supposed to snap his fingers like Dream of Jeannie and make everything all better again? A class room of second-graders would know better than that.

6 six years ago hardly anyone hear had even ever heard of Obama. Now he is supposed to be the most superhuman president of all time?

Folks, this is ridiculous. You want Obama to be a fighter, start fighting yourself and for something real. Stop this copy-cat crap about "supporting the troops" as if the chickenhawkshit of Bush and Cheney must be tolerated forever. Stop wasting a whole summer on utterly irrelevant tea-leaf-reading about what a slam dunk Supreme Court nominee did or didn't accidently or on purpose say or mean ten years ago. Stop juvenile sloganry about "hope" (for what, without doing anything?) or "change we can believe it" (WHAT F-ING change? oil change, spare change?). Stop ignoring the real problems of an oil-addicted something-for-nothing economy, a broken international security system, an education system starved of funding but smothered in political correctness, the asinine worshipping of digital gadgetry, the decadence of a cess-pool popular culture, the tolerance of incompetence and ignorance, etc etc.

He does not appear to be engaged nor have a connection any longer to the voters. While Palin stirs up the "lunatic fringe" he seems to have retreated to an offside seat in the bleachers.

I'm not disappointed in Obama, just "for" him.

The absolute chaos and corruption at every level of government cannot be undone. From government contracting to the big bank bailouts while little banks wither and die (to be swallowed whole by the biggies later).

It's a massive money grab, the people with the most want all the money. Just watch, the stock market will bubble (again) then burst, just so they can shave off what little any shareholder has left. This is probably orchestrated to cause fundraising problems in the next Presidential election

If Bernanke or Geithner have any conscience at all they will place a moratorium on consumer payments of any kind to any bank that has accepted bailout funds in order the "cleanse" their balance sheets. Why should I pay my mortgage if my bank won't lend to anyone, credit worthy or otherwise?

All I can hope for is that it doesn't get worse under his administration.

I'm not sure but what you're really asking is whether or not a decent, thoughtful person can succeed in American Politics, or whether one has to become like the "other" to defeat the other. I hope not, I really do hope not. It has been said too many times to count that a country gets the kind of government it deserves. If we deserve the caustic, crude, fright-mongers, then we'll get the caustic, crude fright-mongers. And if Obama goes down the way Carter went down, well, I would rather have a one-term Carter with a brilliant ex-presidency than a two term Reagan or George W. And history will judge him and Obama kindly, even if nervous progressives don't.

But don't expect he's neglecting the sins of the past administration. Eric Holder, New York City, an Open Court:-- there's a couple of shots across the bow of Cheney and the anti-Constitutional Republicans that will be most interesting to watch.a

obama has reinvigorated a dying republican party with his weak style and republican light policies.

its a joke that the media pretends to give coverage to the cries of liberal,socialist etc.

everyone with a brain sees he is anything but a liberal/progressive.

and who with integrity could like him for that?

Obama is failing in his most important--arguably the ONLY important--duty of his presidency: to prevent the Republican party from regaining power and to neutralize them politically for as long as possible--hopefully forever.

Obama has been terrible so far. He's squandered enormous personal popularity, his legislative efforts have been inadequate failures and half measures (viz. stimulus bill and mortgage "bailout"), and he's sucked the oxygen from the legislative process with this ridiculous and beside-the-point months-long health care "reform," which is going to wind up being another pointless, toothless dogwater collection of programs that will help nobody (see mortgage bailout, above). Overall, I'd give him a D. It's the economy, stupid. Not health care.

Frankly, the most important thing he is supposed to be doing is de-balling the Republican Party, and all he's done is re-legitimize them. Disappointing isn't the word. It's effin' awful. He's got just a few more months to begin leading. If the Repubs take back the House, it'll be all-impeachment, all the time, until they take back the White House in 2012.

obama does not know how to wield the sword in his hands. worse, he acts like he does not have one.

To be disappointed would mean I had higher expectations. Hmmm. No, I didn't have higher expectations in Obama. I had higher expectations that if we built a 60% majority in both houses of Congress that we could move our agenda. It is clear to me that the problem we have is that there are too many DINOs.

What are the choices? 70% majorities? Minority parties to the left? Give in to the Republicans who can change the course of public policy with 50.5% majorities? Selectively remove DINOs, aiming mostly to move them to the left but admitting that some will fall to the right? I don't know.

It seems that 70% majorities are a pipe dream. Giving in the Republicans is a disaster. That leaves minority parties and selectively removing DINOs. Minority parties have never made much headway in American politics.

Time to select the DINOs who will fall.

The policies Obama has pursued haven't been all that different from those he ran on. So while it is perfectly reasonable to disapprove of those policies, I don't know that there are extensive grounds for "disappointment".

First, Obama ran as a conciliator and bridge-builder: "no red America; no blue America", etc. etc. And that's the approach he has taken. I don't know where in the world people would have gotten the impression that he was going to launch a barrage of highly partisan inquisitions into the misdeeds of the Bush administration.

Obama also supported a rather moderate health care reform program in his campaign - one that didn't even include a mandate. The one that is coming up is probably more progressive than the one he actually ran on.

He also promised to draw down in Iraq so that more resources and attention could be shifted to Afghanistan. And that's pretty much what he has done.

A whole bunch of Democratic voters seemed to have harbored secret hopes that Obama didn't really believe the things he was saying, and that he was really some sort of Stealth Kucinich. But he isn't any such thing. Instead, he is pretty much as advertised.

Nevertheless, I am disappointed in a few things:

Obama is supposed to be a great communicator. And I expected a much better, and more assertive communications operation from this White House. On the days when Obama is not making a big speech, his administration always seems to be playing defense and falling behind.

Like other recent Democratic political operations, they have a passive and overly-deferential attitude toward public opinion. When they find out that they slightly out of step with current public opinion, their first instinct is to say, "How do we have to change our position so that it is more in line with public opinion?" They don't ask themselves nearly enough, "How do we change public opinion so that it is more in line with our positions?" What is even worse, they constantly fail to exploit their edge when they do have public opinion on their side. When they're up 60-40 on something they act like they are down 40-60.

Obama has also shown surprising shortcomings in his ability to connect in a fundamental, emotional way with ordinary Americans. I thought he would be much better at that. He doesn't do enough to project the sense that the problems of ordinary people are uppermost in his mind. He comes off as way too friendly with Beltway, Wall Street and elite university technocrats, and is missing a populist note.

I also expected more of that "bottom-up" politics he talked about during the campaign. But instead, we have the same old rule by technocrat. He seems to decide what the policies are going to be within his own inner circle and in consultation with the powerful, and then he expects his army of voters to support them, no questions asked. He is not doing enough to listen to popular demands, and build policies that respond to them in a collaborative way.

And finally, I am extremely disappointed in the team he chose. I expected a more creative group, with a mix of new and old blood and some "new generation" thinking. But instead, we have a lot of old-school, 90's-style Third Wayism, and an approach to policy which is ... well, boring. So far, Obama seems oriented toward turning the clock back to the good old days in a "return to normalcy". I'm not seeing many signs that he is capable of responding boldly and creatively to new challenges.

The issue is not that we are disappointed with Obama, therefore we would have been better with a McCain administration (God, no!). It's that we have a lot of anger and frustration that built up over the 8 years of the previous administration, and now we want our pound of flesh. We want a kick ass, aggressive move to implement a progressive agenda, and correct the misdeeds of the Bush years. While I agree that a effort needed to be made to work in a real, bipartisan way to solve the country's problems, it is obvious that the Republicans have no desire, or intention, to work with the President on anything except more bombs and soldiers to war zones. We want to feel, and see by his actions, that he has our backs, and is willing to fight for these issues, not fold and give in at every resistance.

Liberals want an administration that is the left wing equivalent of the Bush-Cheney administration

bad assumption is bad.

most of the liberals I know didn't find Obama very liberal during the primary or election.

but, most I know didn't think we were activists for the DLC when working to elect Obama.

Most I know didn't expect such a coporate slanted administration.

I read all this and I think back to all the shit I had to take at TPM for pointing out what people here are just now seeming to realize. It was so bad that the "Report Abuse" button was put on TPM commentary because of it.

What really bothered me then was knowing that the wave of progressive energy and analysis of who we are and where we going, that anti-Bushism generated was going to be pissed away uselessly. That energy was probably the most positive thing that had happened in modern American politics and Obama was obviously just the establishment's lightning rod to carry all that energy harmlessly off into the ground.

That is what is happening now.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/why-i-remain-bullish-on-obama.html#more

I wanted a fighter, too. Which is why I was a Clinton supporter. OBama ran as a conciliator so anyone who is disappointed has no right to be. He is delivering exactly the sort of centrist government he promised. He pledged to put bipartisanship over principle and getting along over doing the right thing and that's what he is delivering...so suck it up. That's what you chose.

I agree MJ and the fear of him becoming an ineffective president gives me the creeps given the "alternative" in the crazy Republican side. It is disappointing and frustrating to witness how this president does not seem to be putting up a fight. I am part of "his base" who voted for him in the primaries over Clinton and went out to help. What is frustrating is that Obama thinks he can ignore his base (thinking that we are going to work for him no matter what) but I am not willing to give him another dime or a second of my time until I see results or at least some effort to fight for what he campaigned for. Ignoring his base while trying to appease those who choose to believe that he was born abroad is sure a road to losing in 2012.

Some seem to be writing a script of either nice guys finish last (or don't even get started) or don't get a second term. There is a balance between words and deeds but where it is placed on the political scale varies vastly among the populace. Obama could be doing better but it would be a whole lot worse with McCain and Palin. There's probably even a greater disappointment with Congress which sometimes forgets that it's harder to keep greater numbers together when your party is in the majority. The biggest problem with public perception is that all too many think that the only thing their member of Congress (or somebody eles's if theirs is special) stands for is for re election and in line for the money from special interests to stay in Washington.

well, I'm certainly not disappointed in Obama. I think we get pretty much what I expected. Sure, like everybody, I sometimes entertained a wild hope that he would surprise me positively. That does happen, rarely. But I knew that I was just daydreaming, like about winning the lottery.
We didn't win the lottery. we got exactly what we paid for when we bought the lottery ticket, a short license to dream that life could be different, until reality reasserts itself.

What is disappointing for me is reading post after post here, including MJ's original, analyzing the issue as Obama's personality or style, or discussing which leading candidate would have been better. That's pathetic, it's like agonizing over taking the lottery ticket ending with 34 instead of the one ending in 77.

Obama is president because he convinced the power structure, the wall street funding base, the political commentariat, etc., that he would deliver them. Most crucially, that he, with his "community organizer" horse manure, is the best person to save US capitalism from the growing anger that is building up against it. And he does exactly that. He's saving wall-street's bacon. He's managing our anger. He's saving the insurance industry from reform. He's saving the war industry from the anger thatwasbuilding up against ity during the Bush years. He is demobilizing liberals. He is depoliticizing those who been recently politicized. He is doing great! This is the way power works. You want it to be different, you need to build a different power.

There is no shortcuts. We are in Afghanistan because we are ruled by the military-industrial complex. Hillary, Biden, Gore, nobody will do squat about that. They can't stand up to it for the same reason you can't stand up to train.

We are bailing out wall-street because we are ruled by wall-street, not because Obama is a patsy. If he weren't a wall-street patsy, he wouldn't have been electable in the first place. That's the rule. Look, Kucinich isn't a corporate patsy. He proved it by obstructing privatization to the point of losing his job as mayor. That is why he is not going to be president. Why didn't you all stuff envelopes and rang doors for Kucinich? You didn't do it because he wasn't electable and he wasn't electable because he isn't a patsy of corporate America.

You were warned.

I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.

--Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope 2006.

And I think you didn't listen. In a lot of your writings here, it seemed to this reader that you didn't listen to his policy views, you projected. You also seemed more concerned with the color of his skin (and the response to that of others, like some American Jews,) his oratorial talents, and some imagined likeness to 60's figures like RFK and MLK, than his actual published beliefs about policy and government.

Here, for one example, is Goldberg's May 2008 interview with him on Israel, (which you yourself recommended to TPM readers here,) in which he expresses strong pro-Israel sympathies, both personal and political, confirms that he believes Hamas to be a terrorist organzation, and recounts telling Ramallah youth that his and America's committment to Israel's security is" non-negotiable." In your writings here, more than once, you implied that, like later with his speech to AIPAC, he just said this type of thing for political expediency. But he warned you in that interview that his committment to Israel was more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency.

To this reader, you often seemed to be ignoring what he said and instead projecting your views on him. Just as you sometimes do with other articles you cite, you pick something out and project your own views on it, and when the reader goes to look at it, they find it doesn't say what you say it says at all.

Yes, I wanted miracles on top of that. Yes, I want Cheney strung up by his balls. Yes, I want labor and unions to be the focal point, and vocal point, that lead our economy towards green jobs or any jobs that gets us jobs. sincerely

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Would Hillary Clinton or John Edwards do better? I don't know. Would Kucinich? That point is moot.bathing suits

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