Sullivan: Blistering Obama's critics

ANDREW SULLIVAN, the widely published author/blogger (Daily Beast), has opened a new front in this yakety political year by damning both ends of the ideological spectrum for failing to credit the successes of the Obama presidency. In a long cover story in the current Newsweek, Sullivan ventures deeply into the record of Obama'a first term, accusing his critics of being "simply - empirically - wrong."

That is not likely to win him a single style point from the folks - particularly Fox News and outraged right-wing blogs - who have been demonizing Obama since Adam and Eve. Nor will it earn him a prominent seat on the dais when he says,

"But given the enormity of what he inherited, and given what he explicitly promised, it remains simply a fact that Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb."

Sullivan, a self-described "conservative-minded independent," clearly believes Obama deserves a second term while at the same time conceding there have been days when the president ended up in Sullivan's doghouse. There have been moments when liberals like me (You didn't know?) shared the pain of seeing the White House stray from the page of what a progressive president ought to be doing.

It was, indeed, painful to see the Obama economic recovery plan include large loans to Wall Street, and bailout money to the auto industry which Bush delivered. Yet, as Sullivan asserts, , both initiatives succeeded, with much of the loans now returned to the U.S. Treasury. And where would the auto industry, now looking healthy again, have been without the bailout. Or for that matter, the hundreds of thousands workers up and down the line who would be unemployed today.

Sullivan notes that Obama's foreign policy has enjoyed the kinds of success that appeared out of reach - from Libya to the removal of Osama bin Laden - the latter of which Bush had earlier blithely written off as a bad debt.

At home, there was progress in recognizing the validity of gays in the military and other advances in equal rights.

Sullivan is happy to stress that "Under Obama, support for marriage equality and marijuana legalization has crested to record levels. Under Obama, a crucial state, New York, made marriage equality for gays an irreversible fact in American life."

The new health care reform law isn't everything that Obama wanted , but as Sullivan writes, the heavily assailed measure "crosses the Rubicon of universal access to private health care," noting that "making 44 million current free-riders pay into the system is not fiscally reckless; it is fiscally prudent. It is, dare I say it, conservative."

I long ago concluded that Obama, though exasperating at times, was a master chess player who had properly sized up his challenge by the vengeful Republican stonewallers and chose to take a more cautious and certainly more patient view of meeting his goals.

Perhaps Sullivan's most defining statement about the president is that to "understand Obama, you have to take the long view. Because he does."

The piece is timely, intruding on the series of Republican debates that have been geared for sausage lovers. Unless the GOP's level of discourse somehow rises from babbling inanities, the voter may reasonably ask: "Good grief! Is that all you've got?"

Is "man up" the same as "man overboard"?

THERE IS AN absolute in political campaigns that very little is said that is original. Ever since the proprietors in colonial days insisted that they should not be taxed, the idea has persisted among Republicans that taxes do nobody any good, particularly the wealthiest one or two percent who control most of the money anyway. Not a fresh idea.

But ancient anti-tax talk is now sharing the political dialogue with another idea that doubtless emerged from the prairies of America. From what I've read, men were men in those days. They carried six-shooters, drank their bottles dry, never shaved and killed cattle thieves for the hell of it. If guys like Gene Autry whipped out his guitar to fetch Frosty the Snowman, it was Hollywood's way of assuring us that life on the frontier wasn't all bloody macho.

Now, in the age of steroidal whacks at baseballs, the candidates, particularly the much heralded Mama Grizzlies, are insisting that you can't trust a man who won't man up. It has become an overworked talking point for the 2010 election as the Grizzlies challenge their male opponents to man up for no reason at all other than it's a catchy way (they suppose) to convince the audience that we have a newly vulnerable weaker sex on our hands. Even Newsweek picked up on the echoes in a cover story a few weeks ago by telling us that the "Traditional Male is An Endangered Species. It's Time to Rethink Masculinity."

That may be so. But as a threatened male, I have to keep telling myself they used to say the same things about buffaloes. There is even a term for this: the blog POLITICO calls it "man-upsmanship", so you see how the mere mention of unmanly things keeps getting recycled these days. When the word spread to Nevada, Republican Sharron Angle promptly challenged her rival, Sen. Harry Reid with "Man up, Harry Reid!" Moving to Missouri, POLITICO recorded these words from Democratic senate candidate Robin Carnahan, as she sought satisfaction from her Republican opponent in a debate over health care. "Man up," she challenged him,"and do what you ask of other people to do."

I've tried to rethink my male-ness and have asked myself, "Do I really want to be Hulk Hogan?" He had manned up long before Sharron Angle arrived on the scene. But I really don' t want to be a Mama Grizzly or a Hockey Mom, either. As a former poker player, I've decided to just play the cards that have been dealt to me and wait for somebody to invent another cliche.

In the meantime, I would caution the man-up ladies that there is a risk involved here: Now that you have the weakening sex right where you want them, do you really think it's a good idea to have them return to their old domineering ways?

Headlining a victory doesn't make it so

NO, THAT's not a satirical knockoff of a Newsweek cover by an anti-war graphics artist at Comedy Central. It's the real thing that was published back in the March 8 issue. It seemed so blatantly optimistic at the time that I saved it as reminder of the cheerleading that has been going on in the national media ever since George Bush escorted them into the Iraq invasion.

You'll notice that the Newsweek editors didn't hesitate to adorn the cover with the spurious Bush "victory" on the aircraft carrier, one of the biggest theatrical props since the DeMille days. As I watched that fiasco I could only wonder why they had not also rented some of Aida's elephants as a subliminal way of boasting of another Bush triumph.

Democratic Iraq?

That would only make sense to the corrupt politicians on the ground over there who have yet to figure out how to run the place without giving up some of their U.S. largesse. The "government" has been deadlocked ever since the last elections (scarily like the worsening conditions here - which likely will grow worse after the November elections), frequent bombings and the absence of electrical power in Baghdad for nearly 20 hours a day in searing summer heat. A New York Times reporter on the streets told of polluted drinking water, trash strewn streets, blackouts, unsafe hospitals and still-shattered buildings destroyed by insurgents and American bombings.

For a more authentic comment on the democracy we created with nearly a trillion dollars, hear what Haitham Farhan cynically told the Times as he stood in his shop without electricity:

"Democracy didn't bring us anything. Democracy brought us a can of Coke and a beer."

So now president Obama is removing U.S. troops from Iraq with many of them destined for another losing cause, Afghanistan. Like his predecessors, Obama has trapped himself in the belief that there is something to win in that part of the world even as internal reports tell him otherwise, costing us more and more in lives while strangling the treasury. What is it about American presidents, anyway, that they can't escape the grasp of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about, a merger that prefers hawks to eagles?

Lyndon Johnson, who was responsible for so many progressive social programs, was dogged by Vietnam, and eventualy gave up any notion of seeking a second term. Obama, who crashed though an eternity of indifference or obstruction to preside over health care, Wall Street reforms and many other sorely needed programs, needs to have a copy of the final LBJ years on his desk. Obama can't win in Afghanistan because despite the assurances of the military and right-wing chorus, nobody has yet given us a clue to what winning really means.

McCain: Not now, or ever was, a maverick!

John McCain added a new layer to revisionist history this week in my latest copy of Newsweek. The Arizona senator, once the itinerant campaigner on the Straight Talk Express, told the magazine that, and I quote:

"I never considered myself a maverick. I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities."

Whoa, there, pardner. If what you say is true, you even fooled Sarah Palin, who could have sworn that your were a mav wherever she campaigned. She even said it again in Arizona to boost your campaign for reelection.

But you have yet to fool Newsweek. In big black letters it labeled the interview,

A MAVERICK FIGHTS FOR HIS POLITICAL LIFE - AND HIS SOUL.

Time to come clean, John. The posse is rounding the bend.

Tom Strauss lays it on the line

TOO BAD THE stone-faced Republican opposition at yesterday's "summit" with President Obama didn't have the cautionary words of Tom Strauss to consider before they demanded that the health-reform bill be wiped clean (Read: delayed forever) before any further action.

Strauss is the chief executive officer of Summa Health System in Akron whose urgent appeal for prompt governmental action appears in Newsweek and the Huffington Post. Coming from a realist who is in the trenches daily to keep the health system afloat, it effectively undercuts the GOP's manifesto that reform should take more time - for reasons that are more or less genetic with that side of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

"As health professionals," Strauss writes, "every day we see more people who need care, but cannot afford to pay. Ohio's free clinics have seen a 30 pct. jump in patients the past year. At one local clinic, it typically takes three months to fill the slots open each quarter for new appointments. Last January, it took three days. This January, it took three hours, as people who used to work as volunteers sign up to receive care themselves."

The figures reported by Strauss for the Summa System offer a somber picture of the enormous challenges that are not uncommon for non-profit hospitals today.

"The vast majority of the uninsured we see are working families. They either have employers who cannot afford rising premium costs, are self-employed and cannot afford the cost of health care themselves, or they cannot find coverage due to pre-existing conditions. The economic cost is staggering, but the human cost is beyond any dollar figure; just ask any nurse, who has looked into the eyes of a parent, ashamed that he or she cannot provide for family members until they are so sick that the emergency room is the only answer.

"We're all trying to do our part to help. At the system level, our hospital continues to treat everyone, regardless of ability to pay. At a community level, our health professionals volunteer in free clinics - more than 150,000 hours of personal time last year. At the county level, public health officials are working with local hospitals to address the root causes of chronic illness. At the state level, legislators are working to stretch depleted tax coffers to keep up with burgeoning Medicaid demand. Unsung heroes at non-profit, faith-based, and community organizations continue to fill the gap."

Strauss notes that the Summa System provided $57.6 million in net uncompensated care in 2008, including nearly $23 million in direct charity care.

And the costs continue to rise dramatically..

"What we really need is for the federal government to do its part, too - finish the job it started a year ago, and pass some form of health care reform. Is the compromise bill proposed by the Obama Administration this week perfect? No. Will everybody be able to find fault with parts of it? Yes. But we are far beyond the point at which our elected officials can allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good."

Strauss is an enlightened executive at a time when there are too many others who prefer to serve by only standing and waiting, athough equally confronted by the critical mission of health care. Unfortunately, those Republicans who showed up at the summit yesterday regard their only critical mission as the next election.