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Notes -
The Obama Factor
Ran across this lengthy piece in Tablet this week. I have a lot of thoughts about it, but the main one is that it is the first piece I've encountered that feels sufficiently removed from the Obama years to count as sufficiently distant to be a really good historical retrospective. Of course, that's not all it is! But it consists substantially of a conversation between two men who have impeccable liberal bona fides. David Garrow is a biographer of some repute, and his wide-ranging commentary here is priceless.
For my part, back in the day, I was bullish on Obama during the Democratic primaries, in part due to a rumor that he intended to tap Lawrence Lessig to do some intellectual property reform. Beneath the soaring oratory and the socialist populism, Obama seemed to me to get technology in a way that I thought it might be good for America's economic future. When he did things like appoint RIAA lawyers to top positions a lot of the old nerd guard felt betrayed, but looking back I think most were also profoundly incurious about that betrayal. Maybe because we're all just accustomed to politicians failing to live up to their promises? Only, I don't know that Obama made any clear promises along these lines, it was more that he spoke in promising ways, if that makes sense. It was a failure, not of promises, but of promise. Obama's failure to appoint the right tech people didn't make a lot of sense to me then, but modeling him as doing things he imagines winners do, rather than modeling him as someone with real ideological commitments, gets me there.
Likewise, the economic plight of black Americans actually worsened under Obama (e.g.), but I don't recall much discussion then about how Obama is not Black, i.e. is not a descendant of American slavery and did not even especially grow up with descendants of American slavery. This piece touches on that a fair bit.
There is also some fascinating stuff here re: MLK, and Clarence Thomas. It opens with a great exploration of Obama's fabulism, and touches on his dalliances with Marxism. It makes explicit the connection between Obama's courting of Iran, and his turning a blind eye to Syria. There are digs on Bibi and Putin, there's a brief discussion of Hitler. It all hangs together as a talk about the relationship between individual personalities and the sweep of political history.
I'd include some choice quotes but I don't want to focus the conversation any more than I already have. Every single word of this piece is worth reading, on my view, and I'd love to hear what others take from it.
We had a very good discussion on this piece in the Culture War Thread last week, here.
I think the most interesting assertion is that Obama has stayed in DC and is secretly the power behind Biden, holds meetings with all his juniors, is implied to decide policy. I'm pretty doubtful here. I don't think Obama is ideologically motivated enough to shape ongoing policy, the argument actually seems to counteract both Garrow's and Samuels' other claims.
The article has an answer: it started as a response to Trump and continues cause Obama wants to push his non-achievements like rapprochement with Iran.
It doesn't seem contradictory but it's yet another thing that is blamed on his narcissism.
I understand why Samuels wants to see the Iran Deal as this major obsession of Obama's, because Samuels is a committed Zionist who hates the JCPOA because he thinks it's bad for Israel and, as part of that, that any rapprochement with Iran without regime change is absolutely wrong.
But in real life I'm not sure Obama is that committed to the deal. Even if it had held, it wouldn't be cited as the main thing of import that happened during his presidency (which will be 'economic recovery from 2008' or 'Obamacare'). If it gets restored under Biden it still won't be a great legacy and is unlikely to lead to a full or even partial normalization of relations (something that hasn't even happened yet with Cuba despite them being much less hostile to the US than Iran, having restored diplomatic relations and so on).
The Iran Deal was, separately from the geopolitics, also a pretty major effort by the executive branch to bypass any limits on its spending or treaty powers, as well as to hide from outside scrutiny period. It's not like they just sent John Kerry to futz around and a deal just spilled out.
I'm doubtful Obama would have put it as a top-five and maybe not even as a top-ten in terms of things he'd highlight from his presidency (Ben Rhodes, on the other hand...), but in terms of something that took a ton of political capital and seemed to get outsized focus for what it could have returned even had Iran actually intended to hold to it, I think Samuel's summary is pretty reasonable.
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