Robert Reich on Obama's Failure

Here's an excellent post by Robert Reich:

On Monday, the same day the White House was finalizing its $900 billion tax deal with Republicans, the President gave an important address at a vocational technical school in North Carolina.

It was his clearest statement yet about the challenges America faces in the global economy. The United States has gone from 1st to 9th place among nations in the percentage of its population that graduates from college, he noted. We now rank 24th in the portion of our children who have a high school degree. Our infrastructure is crumbling.

“The most competitive race is between America and our competitors around the world,” he said. “In the race for the future, America is in danger of falling behind.”

But the President’s tax deal makes it harder for the United States to get back on top. By extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy, shrinking the estate tax, and freezing discretionary spending (on everything except defense), he’s leaving almost nothing for education and infrastructure.

And by embracing deficit reduction while agreeing to $900 billion in tax breaks — the lion’s share for the rich — he’s making education and infrastructure spending sitting ducks for a Republican congress intent on shrinking the size of government.

The states — many of them broke — are still firing teachers, doing away with pre-school programs, and raising tuitions and fees at public universities. And now that the stimulus is about over, there won’t be any more money to rehabilitate the roads, bridges, sewers, and energy systems that are still falling apart all over America.

“We can win the competition,” the President said, Monday. His words were inspiring. But his deed that day, approving a tax deal that continues George W. Bush’s fiscal policies, makes that goal harder to achieve.

The sad fact is that Obama looks in a mirror and see a heroic moderate who has found a way to bind the wounds of partisanship and lead his country out of the woods. Robert Reich looks at Obama and sees a leader who fails to understand the deep contradictions in his policies and the deep wounds his "compromises" make. Obama is a leader with a wonderful vision, but he simply doesn't understand how to attain it and he doesn't have the skills or the leadership talent to move the American people forward.

Obama reminds me of the US Civil War general George McClellan. McClellan was great on the parade ground. He did wonders in whipping up the Army of the Potomac as a fighting force. But he was a general haunted by fears of his enemy. He constantly failed to make decisive engagement with the enemy because he was convinced they had overwhelming superiority. Obama is convinced that he had to compromise endlessly with the Republicans in order to find "common ground". But the joke is that Obama ends up sitting in the Republican camp giving them the deal they wanted all along as a "compromise". Similarly, McClellan so convinced himself of numerical inferiority that he handed the South the only victory they could hope for: procrastination and delay. The South was hopelessly out-numbered and out-classed. The North had the factories and the population, the Navy and the wealth. The South had a wonderful martial tradition but lacked in everything else. It could "win" the Civil War only if the North convinced itself the situation was hopeless. McClellan was their man. For the Republicans, Obama is their man!