[p2p-research] judging obama's policies

[Chris Watkins]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 08:57, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I find this citation from http://ranprieur.com/archives/022.html, very
> insightfull, to understand how we should judge Obama:
>
> "Another way to say it: having studied Obama closely over the last year, I
> trust him to do the best job that's politically possible. Now, by watching
> what he does, we find out what is and is not politically possible. He's like
> a scientific testing device, pointing to invisible forces. The observation
> that he backed Joe Lieberman keeping his powerful Reichssicherheits
> Committee chairmanship, tells us that the forces behind Lieberman are deep
> and powerful. The observation that politicians who opposed a disastrous and
> unpopular war are *still* blacklisted, tells us that the American military
> murder-suicide plunge is barely slowing down."
>

I'm not sure about "blacklisted" - I doubt that anyone could stop Obama
appointing politicians who opposed the war, and in fact he'd probably have a
lot of support, considering the strength of the victory and the makeup of
the new Congress.

It's also about how Obama thinks he can best achieve his aims - bringing
about the changes he wants to, and also getting re-elected in 4 years time.
To do those things, he wants the widest support he can get, and he can do
that best by being portrayed as a moderate. Appointing politicians who may
have been completely right about the war, but in the process alienated more
conservative people (who associated the war with love of their country) will
not help him claim the image of being moderate and balanced.

It may not be how we like it, and it may not be fair, but it's about as
democratic a process as I'm aware of inside any national government today.
(There are plenty of undemocratic features of the US government, but this is
not a glaring one, by US standards and certainly not by world standards.)

Chris


> --
> The P2P Foundation researches, documents and promotes peer to peer
> alternatives.
>
> Wiki and Encyclopedia, at http://p2pfoundation.net; Blog, at
> http://blog.p2pfoundation.net; Newsletter, at
> http://integralvisioning.org/index.php?topic=p2p
>
> Basic essay at http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=499; interview at
> http://poynder.blogspot.com/2006/09/p2p-very-core-of-world-to-come.html
> BEST VIDEO ON P2P:
> http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=4549818267592301968&hl=en-AU
>
> KEEP UP TO DATE through our Delicious tags at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
>


-- 
Chris Watkins (a.k.a. Chriswaterguy)

appropedia.org - Sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives.

identi.ca/appropedia / twitter.com/appropedia
blogs.appropedia.org

I like this: five.sentenc.es
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20081230/b491d4f6/attachment.html>