No Apologies

Posted on January 10, 2012 at 12:32 pm by Bob Cesca

I’m with DougJ on this. It’s okay to present an argument in favor of the president without prefacing it with a lengthy cover-your-ass speech about the things you disagree with — apologizing for his failures.

The “cool” wing of the progressive movement seems to require a preemptive apology before any complimentary words about the president or else you’re instantly laughed off as an animatronic Obamabot torn from the same cloth as the zealots who screamed “MUSHROOM CLOUDS!! SUPPORT BUSH OR DIE!!” But guess what? Even if you do qualify your support with an acknowledgment of mistakes, most of the more hard-lined cool kids will still think you’re an Obot or whatever.

The truth is that arguing in support of the president’s politics and policies is motivated by a near-term review of the positive ratio of Obama administration successes versus failures, cast against the backdrop of historical lessons from, specifically though not exclusively, the 1999-2000 era when a familiar kind of apathetic disillusionment arose during the Al Gore campaign — disillusionment that led too many otherwise smart people to support Ralph Nader or to stay home out of protest or lack of enthusiasm for Gore.

Everyone with a realistic view of the the Obama administration knows what’s what — for better or worse. At this stage in the proceedings, with another pivotal election around the corner, there’s nothing wrong (and everything right) with making a strong case, without apologies, for re-electing the chief executive who’s responsible for all of those better items on the list. And there are many.

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  • JMAshby

    Even if you do qualify your support with an acknowledgment of mistakes, most of the more hard-lined cool kids will still think you’re an Obot or whatever.

    Absolutely.

    Their ideology is different, but this corner of the Left Wing has all the mannerisms of the Tea Party.

    It’s nearly impossible to even engage in a substance-based, factually-driven debate with them. And even if you do manage to initiate a conversation based on substance, within minutes they will get angry and start projecting straight out of their ass before making their way to the emergency exit door that is “Obamabot.”

    If you just throw out the “Obamabot” label, it becomes emotionally acceptable to surrender and stagger off because that person obviously wasn’t worth debating anyway. They’re just an Obamabot.

    If you flipped the coin you would find Teabaggers yelling “RINO” at mainstream Republicans.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      Absolutely right, Ashby!

    • missliberties

      Exactly.

      The best argument I have heard to counter the factually challenged buddhist lefties who insist that NDAA is the final straw for them. First of all every straw has been ‘teh’ final straw for them. Second of all these folks are the same folks that wanted the US to stand aside and do nothing when Gaddaffi was murdering hundreds of thousands of democratic protestors, because they thought action to prevent such mass murder was ‘too warlike’ for the US.The circle doesn’t square.

      Clearly we can’t get out the vote by acting as our candidates and our President is beneath us. That is hardly an inspirational message. And it did not work in 2000.

  • GrafZeppelin127

    People in general are egocentric. They can’t understand how anyone could possibly feel differently about anything from sports to movies to political figures.

    “How can you root for the Mets? They suck!”

    “You actually liked ‘Titanic’? It sucked!”

    “You think Obama is doing a good job? He sucks!”

    Since your opinion is so obviously wrong, since everyone knows that they/it/he suck(s), there must either be something seriously wrong with you or you’re just biased and ignorant and uninformed and blind and either can’t see or refuse to see what everyone else knows is self-evident, viz., that the Mets, “Titanic” and Obama all really, really suck.

    (For the record, the Mets do suck, but that’s hardly the point.)

    • D_C_Wilson

      So did Titanic.

  • holyreality

    A vote for the lesser evil is a vote against whatever GOP candidate who WILL make George W Bush look like an amateur piker.

    Bottom line, Obama,….. or disaster that will have us fond of W’s foibles.

    • http://drangedinaz.wordpress.com/ IrishGrrrl

      While we all probably agree with you…that vote for the lesser of two evils has never motivated the truly undecided.

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      I do not consider the Pres to be “the lesser of two evils”, and I think it would behoove the Left to cease describing him that way.

    • D_C_Wilson

      Calling Obama the lesser of two evils is exactly the kind of thing Bob was arguing against.

      You’re never going to find a president that you will be 100% happy with. That doesn’t mean you have to start shrieking, “He’s just like Bush!” like Chicken Little with Turette’s every time you’re disappointed.

  • GrafZeppelin127

    Let me say also that I entirely agree with Bob here, and with his like-minded cohorts. I’m not sure why it’s become socially unacceptable and impermissible to declare and explain one’s support for the President without qualifying it in this fashion. It’s rather like the “both-sides-are-just-as-bad” requirement. One almost can’t have a conversati­on about politics with -anyone-, without claiming or acknowledg­ing that the GOP and the Democrats, the Right™ and the Left™, conservati­ves and liberals, etc., or any Republican politician and Obama, are equally blameworth­y, equally shrill and irrational­, equally prone to rhetorical excess, equally cynical, equally hateful and distrustfu­l of their opponents, equally dishonest and hypocritic­al, equally corrupt, equally beholden to “special interests”­, equally bought-and­-paid-for, equally interested in winning elections over all else, equally incompeten­t, equally vacuous and vain, or otherwise just equally “bad.” More and more I find it impossible to talk even to my liberal friends and acquaintan­ces about politics without having to base the entire conversati­on on these kinds of equivalenc­ies; the moment I suggest or imply that the two parties or the two individual politicians are -not- equally “bad” in one or more of these ways, I get shouted down and dismissed.

    Thinking the two parties or the two presidential candidates are both just as “bad” is easy, because it relieves us of the obligation to understand­, and more importantl­y to be able to explain (which is actually much harder than it should be) the difference­s. How does one explain the difference between a Democrat accusing a Republican of “wanting to end Medicare as we know it,” and a Republican accusing a Democrat of “wanting to end capitalism­”? Between a Democrat accusing a Republican of “hating gay people,” and a Republican accusing a Democrat of “hating freedom?” It’s easier to just assume and proclaim that they’re the same; that they’re equally hyperbolic­, equally inflammato­ry — and equally untrue. Even though they’re not.

  • Dan_in_DE

    Great post, Bob!

    Let me add a link here to some related thoughts on the GG-unit from Boo-man (btw, I’ve been reading his stuff regularly and he is really kicking ass lately). This is required reading, people! For the rabid Greenwald bashers and those of us with more measured, practical responses to his writing too. Boo-man gives us a respectful, but scathing critic of Greenwalds recent polemics. You can tell how scathing it is by the horrified and extremely defensive comments from the Greenwaldians below the post ;)

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      Hi Dan……wondered where you’d got off to! :)

      I have to disagree. I think that Bob’s critiques of Greenwald’s writing are much more accurate and to the point.

      I like Booman, but on reading the piece, it seems likes he’s trying to sit on the fence. My own opinion of Greenwald is far more straightforward (he is a racist ratfucker), and he does not support Pres. Obama in any way, as opposed to Booman’s contention that he does.

      Adding……..just read the comments, and Booman is more straightforward in his opinion of GG there.

  • villemar

    Hal Sparks made a great comment on Saturday: “I’m not an Obama Apologist. I’m Pro-bama.”

    • http://www.politicalruminations.com/ nicole

      As it should be. :)

  • MrDHalen

    One thing I became very aware of after the 2008 election was that it’s about “Us”; Americans. We still live in a representative democracy. Forty plus million Americans voted for McCain & Palin; and many who didn’t vote, still share their views. These are our neighbors, coworkers, friends and family.

    We as a citizens steer our nation. Drone strikes, civil liberty erosion, defense budgets, corporate taxes, and etc. etc. policy only changes when enough American citizens disagree with the policy. Horrible policy to me may be awesome to my neighbor; that’s just life in a free society.

    President Obama is just one piece of this grand experiment called the United States of America. He cannot save or destroy this country; that will be a decision made by a majority of Americans over time.

    If you want policy changes, start by changing the hearts and minds of your fellow citizens. That’s when things change.

    • mrbrink

      That’s an excellent comment.

      I know Romney and Ron Paul people and not five minutes ago my goofy Ron Paul buddy stopped by with an Alex Jones dvd, told me the other day that gay people shouldn’t get married or get to adopt, illegals are ruining America, and tonight said that flu vaccinations are government experiments, that the New World Order is happening, 9/11 was an inside job, global warming is a lie, the banks and corporations own us and that we should throw off the government…

      I finished with, “and replace it with Representative Democracy…?”

      You think?

      I said violent revolution and armed government overthrow led by people like Alex Jones and Ron Paul is a long way to go for representative democracy and a constitution.

      My retirement-aged Romney friend and neighbor said the other day that he thinks Ron Paul is crazy, “but he’s voting for Romney because he looks like a president!” I told him they’d both be very similar because they’d both be criminally negligent when it comes to retirement security, Medicare, the environment, military intervention, civil rights, equal protection, corporate taxes…

      I remember union guys I worked with voting for Bush twice. Probably voted for McCain, too. Probably think president Obama’s been worse.

      It’s either: Burn it all down, or vote for the people who will– with empty smiles.

      I think a lot of these people felt duped by voting for Bush, or believing in that bullshit 9/11 rubble speech with soaring approval. And now, with their superior judge of character skills so irreparably damaged, they’ve just been lashing out at “both sides” ever since 2007-08 when they realized they fucked it up so bad a black guy could actually become president.

      The scary part is that they seem unconvinced, or in denial, that they are no longer experts on character and leadership.

      As neighbors, as co-workers, as friends and family– we have our work cut out for us.

      Great timing and message, Dan.