Obama "shredded" the constitution by voting for the revised FISA bill. Yeah, it's in tatters; nobody has any rights any more, and there's zero protections of our privacy and no hope in the future for increasing protections. I call this the "slippery slope" hysteria.

He "caved" on FISA because he's into playing politics, a.ka., lying. Some play. He's drawn heavy flak from both sides. Critics say he blew it.  He says  he  sticking  to his  principles, to honestly deciding  what he thinks  is best for the country, making a close call and assuring us that he will fight against the negative consequences of this checkered bill. "Capitulation," I thought, was going over to the other side, as Hillary did when she voted for the war resolution. She didn't have protections, qualifications, showed no signs of realizing that Bush was a pathological liar. Obama sees through the bad things about the bill and thinks he can ameliorate them. If that's caving in to pressure, then he truly is an idiot, because the pressure came only after the vote.

Here's a big one. He's a "centrist."  Yeah, right.  That's why he's for supporting faith based institutions'  secular programs that are, in principle, supported by many positions taken by the ACLU. Oh, and his vote for stripping the telecom immunity from the FISA bill--all the dyed-in-the-wool centrists' who voted against it must have lost their stripes as he became one of the few true centrists for that moment.  What about his recent intensified support of Israel? That clearly violated his previously expressed sensitivity to the Palestinians. Now he cares not a whit about them. We know that, because we see the shifting and shaping going on, and, well, what else can we conclude? He's definitely a centrist, maybe even no different than Bush, as Choamsky suggests.  Then there's the  promise to  "refine" his Iraq policy. That's worrisome. He could easily turn out to be a closet neo-con. Many suspect that he is a closet radical. One of these views has to be correct. If we add them together, we get, you guessed it, a centrist. Hey, if he looks like a centrist for one month, then he must be one.

He isn't anything he said he was, honest, genuine, progressive. Never mind that his entire life up to this point was dedicated to these principles and that people who worked directly with him have certified that he was.

After all, as Mother Jones recently argued, even Paul Wellstone was swallowed up by the system. He had been a committed community organizer too and discovered that institutional influences were impossible to resist. Actully, Wellstone was unlike Obama in crucial respects. Most notably, Wellstone was given to being entirely disagreeable, which is why Wellstone suffered a power shortage. Obama's power is in his empathy. Still, if Wellstone went the way of all flesh, then Obama must too. The big bad powers that be reach into every politician's heart and put an artificial one in it's place. There's no resisting it. Not!

I just posted a much angrier piece on another site, arguing that what are now called "progressive independents" are, as their forebearers in earlier elections have been, brutal to ordinary people without realizing it. Their lukewarm support for and criticism of Obama--withholding contributions, giving the Right talking points, and such--can help enable the Right to continue its devastation in Iraq, much less continue the degradation of social programs, education, health care, and much more. 

I admit to a lack of scholarship and rigor on this point owing to a lack of time, but it has, since my baptism during the Humphrey-Nixon campaign, seemed that the progressives who withhold intense support on the grounds that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republican campaigns, do have devastating effects. Like some influential bloggers and pundits, Choamsky is now, once again, saying there is no difference regarding the current Democrat dominee. Note that Reagen was elected by only 26 percent of the electorate. The progressive independents comletely abandoned Carter. Perhaps it seems specious to argue that these same sort of folks, in sitting out the Bush-Gore election or voting for Nader, unintentionally paved the way for the horrific devastation in Iraq. But this proposition is at least worth discussing.
 
What really are the effects of what often seems a kind of scholarly, hyper-patriotic zealotry that has more in common in tone and purity with the Right than with America as a whole?

I think I sympathetically understand the hopes and aims of these Lefties, having carried, "Nixon Sucks," signs in Union Square in San Francisco and participated in many other such radical adventures during the 1960s. I believed as Alcoholics Anonymous devotees do that you have to hit bottom before you can make significant change. My hope was that, as the country slips into a truly unbearable condition, the masses will awaken. Ooops. Come the revolution, we've still got the same batch of average and right wing folks to deal with. Note also that contrary to popular opinion, AA-based treatment's success rates are no better than no treatment at all, as an award winning research psychiatrist from Dartmouth established. Their logic is facistic--it's brutally demanding. You have to stop drinking before you get help stopping drinking. To the millions of sufferers who fail at AA and die of alcohol poisoning and to the progressive independents, I say, Make the bed to fit the patient.

In this presidential race, the patient is the American people and the people of the world with whom we interact significantly. The emerging treatment for alcoholism is called "harm reduction," which is an unfortunately abstract term. It means that instead of demanding that people quit drinking, instead of demanding purity, the professionals go out under the bridges and into the bars and meet people where they are and help them on their terms. For Obama, it means compromising when the compromise enables him to sustain a relationship with enough of a majority to enable substantial change. He has to go where the majority are rather than jack them up, throw mud in their faces, and denounce them for being stupid.

This is a very difficiult thing to do. It requires immense intelligence and sensitivity, and no one I know of, including the true geniuses I sometimes work with, creates lasting change without making frequent mistakes. Indeed, most of the successful folks I know expect to make close calls that turn out to be mistakes, as in Obama's FISA vote. As I tell my son as he's practicing the trumpet, you have to expect mistakes while keeping in mind the big picture--that you're talent is already proven and that you just need to keep advancing.

Obama's talent is already proven. His heart and soul is already proven. Read his books and read the news reports of what the people in Harvard, Chicago, and the Illinios State Senate who worked with him say about him. He's been doing what he says he wants to do for many years; there's no mystery here--the guy is a proven prince. There's no candidate in memory who had more of what it takes to create change in this country than this man. Of course, he's not everything we want. I disgree with some of his positions and he goofs, but he's damn good enough to deserve intense support from everyone on the Left. We do desperately need him, especially in light of the alternative.

Of course, my plea doesn['t mean we can't disagree and even heavily criticize him. But withhold intense support? That seems grossly inhumane.

I believe that every so-called "centrist" position of Obama's is not centrist. Perhaps the most compelling argument I've seen that makes my case on one of these positions, the faith based initiative, was written by Malcolm P. Johnson, July 7, 2008 12:42 PM, TPM. He shows how a careful reading of the relevant pieces reveals that none other than ACLU, in principle, supports Obama's position. I highly recommend it for its depth.

The other "centrist" positions require equally deep inquiry and understanding. The pundits just aren't making that kind of inquiry. Take also for example Obama's agreement with Scalia regarding the death penalty for child rapists, what psychologists call "regressed" pedophiles. While I disagree with Obama, I can understand his position. Like me, he's seen up close and personal the kind of devastation that these kinds of people cause. I have seen victims live a psychologically dead life. They're very difficult to help. Of course, critics on the Left want to as, Herbert did, accuse Obama of pandering on this issue only because his position may reflect the majority and the Right. But it's just as likely that Obama is reacting out of his feeling for victims and their families, which is what the death penalty is all about. That's not pandering. That's not duplicity or expedience.  There just evidence that he's the kind of guy who truly believes that child rapists should die. That makes him a less the pure progreessive, not duplicitous. I think he's wrong regarding every aspect of the arguments for the death penalty, but there's only superficial evidence that this is pandering.

This is the kind of subtle analysis that is required to sustain the kind of judgment critics on the Left are making.

Take another example, the Wright flap. At first, Wright was only raving against white people. Obama hung with him on that, and he showed no signs of wavering. Then, Wright accused Obama of lying, of taking his position against black racism only for political gain, not because he truly was against black racism. Pundits should argue their implied point here, that anyone, whether political candidate or not, should remain committed to an associate who defames you in public. Argue against Obama's rationale for his break from Wright. Don't take the superficial road of noticing the disparity between his initial commitment and his subsequent decision and calling him expedient or duplicitous. That's superficial at best.

The critics on the Left commit the same fallacy when reporting the flap about his Grandmother. In his book, he said he cringed when she made racist remarks. At the same time in the same book, he expressed admiration and respect for her. The attack pundits quote makes it seem that he is duplicitous in his current ad that emphasizes her love. He's not being duplicitous. He's always expressed respect and love for her. The fact that he cringed when she made racist remarks doesn't change that. He was not calling her a rabid racist, someone he can't respect. He even empathized with much more intenese white racists in his speech on race. There's no disparity here, except when you take a superficial look at the evidence.

He does not support the immunity clause. He's been entirely consistant in being against it. He's only voted for the entire bill with heavy qualifications and for a narrowly defined reason--the need to keep data gathering tools in place. The critics don't even mention his heavy qualifications. Did his vote today affect anyone's view of this matter? He's being attacked by McCain for that vote.

The flag pin is a petty but divisive issue. The critics on this point wouldn't want to wave a German flag in the face of survivor of the Halocaust, which seems like an extreme analogy. But for many people on the Right it isn't. The flag pin would, for me, just be a matter of respect for the inflamed passions of people who really believe that the pin is important. Why antagonize them with preachy arguments about the illogic of their views. What's at stake in the argument? To me, wearing the pin is like me avoiding the use of the word, "fuck," around my grandparents.

In Ohio, Barack wasn't a populist opponent of NAFTA. He was for and against various parts of it. The flap in Canada has been thoroughly discredited. It's as though the pundits just aren't careful when they accuse him of being duplicitous on this issue, for, for instance, throwing under the bus the advisor accused of saying that Obama didn't really mean his criticisms of NAFTA. They're riding a theme that they haven't carefully thought through.

Consider his slight change in his views on withdrawing from Iraq. "Refine," a single word, has been taken as evidence that he's duplicitous, pandering, etc. But he refined "refine." He reiterated his commitment to staged, timed withdrawel. It's as though the critics just aren't paying attention.

"Gratuitously dissed his friends at MoveOn.org"??? That characterization is a strained attempt to fit this bit of evidence into the overall attack theme. There is no proof that his criticism of MoveOn was "gratuitous." His criticism of MoveOn is entirely consistent with his expectation to disagree without being disagreeable. He's perhaps insufficiently arguing that, if we want to bring people toward the Left, we simply can't disrespect them. That's no way to change the country. It can be argued that all of the gains Republicans made beginning the Contract With America were the result not of unresolvable policy differences but of hostility, gross disrespect, as in "fuck Nixon," and so on. There is gross animosity between Left and Right in this country. It's understandable, but it's horribly counterproductive.

Obama did not "cut the General's legs off." His surrogate said Obama disavosed Clark's attack. Obama said Clark needed no defending and need make no apology. This attack against Obama is just mistaken, based not on any facts.

What about his supposed abandonment of the Palestinians, his current insensitivity to their suffering. That's all about his most recent speech in which he sided with the Israelis. The deeper view of this speech is that, to resolve conflicts, you must side with both parties. This sounds stange, but consider the following analogy.

When I was adrift regarding psychotherapy theory, I happened on an article by Bernard Apfelbaum concerning a female sex therapist's case. Put oversimply, the prominent sex therapist argued that, because the female partner angrily refused to take advantage of her husband's morning erection--which is the only time he could have a reliable one--on the grounds that he hadn't brushed his teeth yet, the sex therapist said that this woman "had a deep seated hostility toward men" that would take years of therapy to resolve. Part of the therapist's evidence is that this woman was also generally demeaning toward her "too sensitive" husband. Apfelbaum saw through the superficial view of this woman, arguing that her problem was that she didn't really feel entitled to her complaints. Her bravado and self-assertion were just an appearance. This is a simple idea that most people lose their grip on when people are intensely irrational and demeaning; people say stupid things that they don't really mean when they're angry but have some kind of a valid point they're trying to get at.

To begin therapy, he had to initially side with her complaints as a means of engendering trust and enabling her to refine her complaints. Therapy became a process of helping her discover the reasonable complaints hidden in her gross judgments against her husband, for instance, that all the attention in therapy with the prominent sex therapist had been on the man's sensitivities and not at all on hers. She wasn't encouraged to develop her concerns, and Apfelbaum's siding with her enabled her to do that in a respectful manner, which then enabled the man to feel more confident.

By analogy, Obama is forced to side with the Israeli leaders. That's the beginning of the process. When he's talking to the Palestinians, he sides with them as thoroughly as he can without completely polarizing the other side. There's nothing duplicitous in this process if he has in mind helping both sides to refine their complaints and hear the other guy's reasonable concerns. This is exactly what Obama did on the South Side of Chicago. It's what countless community organizers, organizational developers, and international mediators try to do. Obama is no simpleton dummy like the kind of politicians so many on the Left are beginning to accuse him of being. He's a crafty and only superficially duplicitous guy.

There's much evidence that Obama is everything he says he is. It's just that his methods for achieving progressive ends are unfamiliar. Superficially, he appears duplicitous. So it's understandable that people are attacking him. But a thorough, deep view of his entire life and each of his positions, for the most part, reveal a consistent drive to humanize and lift up Americans.