A look at the last American Democratic President from what he actually DID….
And from that?
A understanding of Joe Biden and the others opposite Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren….
Remember ….
Barack Obama was President for two term’s and he is STILL YUGELY popular among Democrats who would vote for him again ….
….Given the political climate, it’s no surprise to see the party’s base clamoring for something dramatic. But the contrast between Obama’s steady approach and the seeming radicalism of his Democratic heirs can’t just be chalked up to changing times. It’s because the former president, going back at least to his 2004 Senate race, hasn’t really occupied the left side of the ideological spectrum. He wasn’t a Republican, obviously: He never professed a desire to starve the federal government, and he opposed the Iraq War, which the GOP overwhelmingly supported. But to the dismay of many on the left, and to the continuing disbelief of many on the right, Obama never dramatically departed from the approach of presidents who came before him.
There’s a simple reason: Barack Obama is a conservative.
Obama’s perspectives don’t line up with every position now seen as right-of-center: He joined the Paris climate accords, he signed the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and he’s pro-choice. He flip-flopped to supporting same-sex marriage, highlighting the significance of marriage.
His constant search for consensus, for ways to bring Blue America and Red America together, sometimes led him to policies that used Republican means to achieve more liberal ends. The underlying conceptfor his signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act, with its individual mandate, was devised by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and first implemented at the state level by Mitt Romney, then the Republican governor of Massachusetts. Obama wanted to protect Americans from the effects of a prolonged recession, so he agreed, in one of his defining votes as a senator, to a bailout of banks — and as president, he prioritized recovery over punishing bankers for their role in the financial crisis. In his first inaugural address he affirmed the power of the free market “to generate wealth and expand freedom.”
Until the Sandy Hook tragedy in 2012, Obama studiously avoided any push for gun control. Indeed, in his first term, he signed laws that loosened restrictions on bringing firearms to national parks and on Amtrak. Though cast as a “dithering” peacenik who led “from behind,” he stuck with his thesis that the imperative “to end the war in Iraq is to be able to get more troops into Afghanistan,” and he prosecuted a drone war in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Obama’s approach to politics was marked by a circumspection that went even deeper than policies. To be conservative, as philosopher Michael Oakeshott, a movement hero, once put it, “is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.” The former president channeled the sentiment faithfully when he said recently that “the average American doesn’t think that we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
He believes, fundamentally, that the American model works — even if it hasn’t been allowed to work for everyone….
Note…
The piece kinda stretches things to the right at first , but comes back a bit to the middle…
The piece also acknowledges towards the end that Obama had to deal with 6 years of Republican majorities in Congress, which meant he HAD to come back from any attempts to go to the left…
Also?
Obama spent a decade as guy who worked at organising things….
People who do that have to be practical…and pragmatic…
I’m NOT making excuses for the guy…
But ?
I have kept saying Democrats have to GET in Office in order effect any of the change their progressives want….
image…Vanity fair…
I don’t think Barack Obama was a “ conservative “as that term has been used to denote political stances .
I would note that most “conservatives “ consider Donald Trump a “conservative “ despite the fact that he has taken positions that use to be antithetical to “conservative” positions in the past.
Accordingly, I’m not certain what is or is not “conservative “ anymore.
In that respect “conservative “now seems to denote little more than general opposition to “libruls,” that term being defined as anyone who “conservatives “are against at any point in time.
Agreed Jack..
The piece WILL get looks….
But i agreed the title does NOT fit the man….
Barack Obama is as much of a conservative as I am a Packers fan.