Barack Obama

Comments made over the weekend by members of Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation that argue President Barack Obama is a leftist who needs to get to the center are simply untrue.

As I written before, Obama is a “centrist” by any rational definition of the word. He supports big businesses while continuing many right-wing policies created during a Republican-dominated government. He has escalated the military occupation in Afghanistan. He has bailed out Wall Street banks and huge automobile manufacturers, earning him the ire of his progressive supporters. His push for health care reform has been effectively stripped of any public option that might hold insurers accountable, and this, too, has disappointed progressive voters.

Let’s be clear. The president supports the corporate/military /industrial complex and will not try to change the power structure embedded in it. He has not proposed one program that can be construed as radical in the leftist sense. He inherited a huge deficit from a Republican president and extended it only to help revive the economy, which has actually improved in a technical sense.

But, according to a NewsOK story, Oklahoma’s Congressional delegation, including U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, a fellow Democrat, see Obama as a lefty who needs to "get to where the American people are, which is somewhere in the center” (Boren’s words), claiming the president “is well to the left of the American people “ (U.S. Rep. Tom Cole’s words.)

The comments, which were made during an Oklahoma Press Association convention, reek of political pandering and calculation. Oklahoma is a conservative bastion, for sure, and Obama is unpopular here for debatable reasons, but that still doesn’t make him a lefty. The story, of course, is short on specific information and long on political rhetoric. The rhetoric makes it difficult to even have a discussion about what constitutes left, right and center.

The real reason the federal legislative process can be construed as ineffective and partisan right now is because of obstructionist Republican senators, who offer no realistic plans or programs and simply oppose Obama no matter what he does. The arcane rules of the U.S. Senate give a lot of power to the minority political party and individual senators through the filibuster and holds.

Here’s what Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times, says about the state of the current U.S. Senate:

The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government. Senators themselves should recognize this fact and push through changes in those rules, including eliminating or at least limiting the filibuster. This is something they could and should do, by majority vote, on the first day of the next Senate session.

Republican senators need to move to the center, not the president. That’s what the country voted for in 2008. The GOP, with help from conservative Democrats, is ramping up the political rhetoric about Obama, but failing this country.

U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn’s reaction to President Barack Obama’s speech on Wednesday is part of the Republican plan to label the president a leftist despite his centrist policies.

In a statement featured on his web site, Coburn said:

. . . if President Obama wants to become the transformational leader he is capable of being, he needs to recognize he was given a mandate to unify the country, not drive through the agenda of the ideological left. This has been a year of hyper-partisanship in Washington because the President and congressional leadership have chosen a hyper-partisan, ideological agenda that has divided America. If the President brought the political center of the country together he may not always get my vote but the country would be better off. Still, I make no apologies for saying no to the obscene abuse of taxpayer dollars that takes place as a matter of course in the United States Senate.

This is typical GOP operating procedure. Republicans will associate Obama with the “ideological left” no matter what he does or what policies he proposes. This is simply rhetorical deceitfulness that plays well with the base, and it’s a calculated political strategy. Will it work? It has here in Oklahoma.

What type of leftist “hyper-partisan” policies has Obama brought to the country? He has bailed out huge Wall Street banks and continued two ill-advised and botched military occupations. He continues to champion businesses, big and small. The current health care initiative, which hasn’t passed, won’t include a public option and would reward big insurance companies with new customers. Some experts believe the federal stimulus program was too small, not too big.

Coburn’s statement conveniently ignores the reality that Republicans were trounced in national elections in 2008 because of inept GOP leadership that brought about the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Senate Republicans, in particular, are obstructing the will of the America people, who voted for change last year.

Obama’s speech Wednesday night contained an honest reckoning of his first year in office, which, in itself, was fresh in terms of the usual Washington politics. Obama inherited a real mess from former President George Bush, and he’s done a solid job when you consider how many problems he faced when taking office. Wouldn’t it be great if Coburn could do an honest reckoning of the Bush years and stop distorting Obama’s record?

With the national unemployment rate now at 9.8 percent, the Obama administration is considering the extension of benefits for laid-off workers, but it probably can’t count on any GOP support.

The GOP, which has launched a massive disinformation campaign against health care reform, will most likely oppose any new Obama administration initiative no matter how it might affect the country. The bottom line is the GOP continues to demonize President Barack Obama, using fear tactics and outright lies.

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls it “spite.” In a Monday column, Krugman writes:

. . . at this point, the guiding principle of one of our nation’s two great political parties is spite pure and simple. If Republicans think something might be good for the president, they’re against it — whether or not it’s good for America.

The Obama administration may push for extending new unemployment benefits past a Dec. 31 deadline, according to the Associated Press, which also reported the White House might push for extending the COBRA health program and a tax credit program for first-time home buyers as well. The extensions are sensible and prudent, but the GOP has already come out against them.

It’s remarkable that as GOP leaders criticize Obama they never mention former President George Bush. The economy and banking system had already tanked under Bush, who also got the country bogged down in two long and expensive military occupations. The Obama team has done a good job of preventing a complete economic disaster and cleaning up the messes left by the Bush administration in its first nine months. This is the reality despite the GOP anti-Obama rhetoric