Posted by
Bill Crawford on Thursday, February 12, 2009 3:24:44 PM
I've been off this for a week, and in times like this, that can be a lifetime. Obama is a man in a hurry, and for good reason. He knows that his time to act without the sludge of his checks and balances is fleeting.
George Will educated me this week. He said that the first Western reference to the "hundred days" was not the whirlwind of FDR taking office, but the time between when Napoleon Bonaparte escaped Elba until the Battle of Waterloo. This is ostensibly to teach that the frenzy does not always reap rewards, I suppose.
At any rate, there are a number of factions out there in America that have been in the wilderness for a long time who feel they have a friend in Obama and a better opportunity than they will again for a long time to act.
Unions: Membership in the private sector has been declining for years, for a number of reasons. The union leaders and their supporters are convinced that it is largely because of workplace intimidation, and are itching to find ways to structure the law to counter that. The fact that the declination has been due more to changes in the workplace, especially in the transition from manufacturing to service to information is lost on most of them. The fact that even the Obama people know by this point that the auto bailouts will go no farther until the UAW is reigned in is lost on them, too. They will strive to get the "card check" laws passed and may well do it, but will run into a wall in company after company, especially in the right to work states.
Gays: These people have been itching to go past the nominal accommodations like inheritance, hospital visiting rights, insurance dependents, etc., into a full blown equal rights movement, capped off with the right to marry, which has been denied to them in large parts of the country. They think that this is a modern day corollary of the civil rights movement, as if the color of one's skin was akin to one's behavior. They may actually get this done in some more states than they already have, but will not get their agenda of using the full faith and credit provision of the Constitution to make it national law. They will attempt to wait for a couple of Obama Supreme Court appointments to try and do a Roe v. Wade, but the reality there is that just as O'Connor retired after Bush took office, the conservatives on the court are younger than their counterparts and will try to stick it out until Obama is gone. His first two appointments are likely to be replacements of a similar ideology.
The Education Industry: Also tied intrinsically with the union phenomenon, these people have been choking at the bit for over a decade to untie themselves from the yokes placed on them by legislative bodies. Starting with No Child Left Behind, which they regard as a leash on their abilities. They also want to use this time to trample all questions of vouchers and charter schools into the graveyard. This will not work because the ongoing experiments are succeeding in many states. It will also run into a wall because of the state of public education in most of our larger cities, which is usually as pathetic as it is expensive.
The Anti-War Coalition: These people will be the most frustrated of all for two reasons. First, Obama aunderstands that our security position in the world is something that, if he goes too far, will be jeapordized in a way that will shut him down politically. He also is nowhere near a civil libertarian and actually likes government power, which is why he consistently voted for extensions of the FISA laws, even while he chided Bush for doing it. This administration may move thier core priorites to Afghanistan, but they will not be able to leave Iraq. They also will not be able to untie themselves from Isreal's problems with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran (especially with the recent resurrection of the Likkud party), nor will they find a solution for Guantanamo.
The Fairness Doctrine: This is a movement to find a creative way to punish conservative public communication. This is a cruel joke, because if they think in a world of a thousand avenues of information dispersal, they can shut down the conservative voice by charter, they are sorely mistaken. Fox News will continue to broadcast despite their best efforts and so will some variant of talk radio. The Right just won't get to ask any questions at White House press conferences before Helen Thomas.
There are others, especially those who don't believe in supply side economics, but those who I think are of any significance I will deal with in other tomes.
What it comes down to is that Obama has revealed his limitations in announcing to the world that he has no control over his own party.