2.1.1 Has a New Center-Left Obama Era Begun? (2008-12)
Prelude
Even though I was quite disappointed by many of the Bush administration policies during his second term, I was very pleased that center-left political and religious groups and movements finally began to explode onto the scene after the debacle of the 2004 election, dominated by a dirty, disinformation campaign carried out by the far-right. The new groups began to fill the serious void of any strong centrist presence in the public square naming the dangerous extremism for what it was and challenging it. I got involved in this rejuvenated center in American faith and politics that played an important role in the election of a center-left Democrat, Barack Obama, to the presidency in 2008. It was both the support and the criticism I received at that time that was the beginning of my sense of calling to create this website in 2010 upon my retirement.
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2004-2008 was a very interesting time of transition in American faith and politics. The ideological extremism and power-grabbing overreach of the "unholy alliance" between the neocons and the Religious Right ended up corrupting both their politics and their faith. Even many of the insiders later came to see it this way and regret it, and the majority of the country began moving from the center-right (which had been deceptively co-opted by the far right) to the center-left. The time was ripe for a swing to a new major cycle in American political history--a new Obama Era.
Obstruct Everything, Continue Spewing Disinformation--Total (Political) War
Unfortunately, the growing public awareness of and support for the new centrism was almost immediately slowed by unanticipated events. Just before the 2008 election, the economy suddenly collapsed into the worst recession since the Great Depression. And, even before the Obama administration took office, the extremists who had lost power began devising strategies to nip this center-left moment in the bud before it could really take hold. They quickly morphed into a merely obstructionist force that rejected the decisive 2008 election results and the traditional role of the minority of operating as the "loyal opposition." That traditional role consisted of helping to govern the nation through a mix of cooperation, compromise and only resorting to obstructive resistance when a policy of the majority totally disregarded their deeply held principles. You could say that the Republicans resorted to an unprecedented strategy of total obstruction that reversed Clausewitz's famous dictum "War is politics by other means"--now, "politics was war by other means." They hoped this would slow down the economic recovery and allow them to blame it on Obama by painting him as a big government, far-left liberal. The result has been unprecedented gridlock.
Republican leaders banked on the American public buying their unscrupulous attempt to blame both the slow economic recovery and the gridlock on the President, to give them a win in the 2010 and 2012 elections. They received support from the new domestic policy agenda Tea Party movement composed mostly of a far-right mixture of anti-government libertarians and older fundmentalist/evangelical Christians. (This was different from the basically foreign policy agenda of the Neocons and the Religious Right in 2004.) The strategy appeared to be working when the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010 with the election of a sizable amount of Tea Party anti-government extremists, which would later come to haunt them. Things looked grim for centrist, left and right.
It was in that crisis situation after the 2010 election that I decided it was important to focus this new website on a short-term goal of reelecting President Obama in 2012. His election in 2008 had been a dramatic break with the unhealthy three-decade-long, expanding predominance of ultra-right wing politics and faith since the 1980 election. His reelection would be crucial for establishing a firm foundation for a new post-Reagan, center-left era in faith & politics, which could help bring substantial parts of the Republican Party and Christian evangelicals back to a healthy center-right.
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Two developments leading up to the 2012 election helped the public begin to see things more clearly. First, it became more and more difficult to convince people that the many Tea Party Republican candidates elected in 2010 (who ran on the promise to not compromise their far-right positions on anything) along with the other Republicans (98% of whom had made a pledge not to raise any taxes) were not the ones responsible for the gridlock (it was and is an "asymmetric polarization," as the best analysis has called it - see 5.6 Mann & Ornstein It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. And second, the assassination attempt on Rep. Gabby Giffords awakened the general public to just how dangerous our current uncivil, polarized political climate has become for our society.
However, other developments, like the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision that opened the flood gates to enormous sums of money that would be available to candidates, seemed to favor those trying to unseat Obama. Also, the character assassinating, policy distorting Republican disinformation campaigns were still taking their toll. |
I'm using this admittedly partisan poster here because it symbolizes the urgent choice we had in the 2012 election. On the one hand, there were moderates of the left and right (Democrats and Republicans and Independents) working together through principled compromise for the Common Good. This is symbolized by a now famous hug (above, left). On the other hand, there was the gridlock that resulted from belligerently anti-compromising Tea Party-backed extremists, who wanted to eliminate all government except the most dangerously minimalist variety. This is symbolized by the the infamous finger wagging (above, right). This website wants to be a force for the former. Where do you stand?
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As I saw it, the President's defeat would be a serious threat to the health of our democracy, especially since the Republican Party was becoming dominated by the many far-right Tea Party representatives. They had helped their party win a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, and they saw clearly that Obama's reelection would be a threat to their extremist anti-government agenda and perhaps even their new power within their own party. Establishment Republican in Congress--including the leadership--feared being "primaried" and thrown out of office in their next election by their own party, if they did not move closer to the extremist far-right. Most of them did this because they needed the support of these new representatives and the extremists they represented to limit President Obama to one term. They believed that this would allow them to pick up where they had left off before Obama's election and use the unhealthy ideologically exclusive, dominating power they had developed to insure their extreme interpretation the Reagan era would be established for the foreseeable future. Before Obama's election this agenda had caused an immoral preemptive war, the most devastating levels of inequality since the Gilded Age and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. One could only imagine what would happen if they regained power.
I believed the key to stopping this was for centrists in faith and politics to join together and use their more healthy pluralistic, cooperative power to recreate a healthy center for our democracy at this crucial point in its history. |
But one of the main obstacles to centrist efforts to reelect the President was that the public was being misinformed about fact that President Obama is a principled left-centrist in both his politics and his Christian faith. (1) The extremist far-right media was spewing intentional disinformation of all kinds, like he is a radical Muslim who wants to destroy America or a dangerous “socialist” extremist who thinks big government is the answer to all our problems. And (2) it didn't help that several on the solid left argued that through weak, unnecessary compromises he had sold out the progressive causes on which he campaigned or was a just a right-wing evangelical Christian all the time.
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While I reviewed a wide spectrum of resources on faith and politics during 2011 and early 2012, I focused on reviews I thought definitively refuted the most drastic misunderstandings to Obama's identity and his unique faith and governing principles in three Detailed Reviews:
5.1 Dorrien, Gary (2012) The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective
5.2 Kloppenberg, James T. (2012) Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope and the American Tradition
4.5 Mansfield, Stephen (2008) The Faith of Barack Obama and (2011 Revised and Updated) The Faith of Barack Obama
and one Highlight Review:
6.4 Obama, Barack (6/26/06) "Call to Renewal, Keynote Address." Sojourners/Call to Renewal Conference
5.1 Dorrien, Gary (2012) The Obama Question: A Progressive Perspective
5.2 Kloppenberg, James T. (2012) Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope and the American Tradition
4.5 Mansfield, Stephen (2008) The Faith of Barack Obama and (2011 Revised and Updated) The Faith of Barack Obama
and one Highlight Review:
6.4 Obama, Barack (6/26/06) "Call to Renewal, Keynote Address." Sojourners/Call to Renewal Conference
Note: Leading up to the 2012 election, I also posted a few links to sites with helpful information for those supporting the president. (If you'd rather skip this page, just go to the link at the bottom of this page to go to the last major page in this section.)
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One of the best ways I can give you a sense of what I felt was at stake in that election, which I had never felt about any previous election, is to have you watch a brief video. E.J. Dionne gave this 8-minute interview about his new book, Our Divided Political Heart: The Battle for the American Idea in an Age of Discontent on The PBS Newshour,8/20/12 (link, right). It's one of the best concise statements of the center-left's commitment to a balance between American individualism/liberty and community/the Common Good (present since the beginning). It also tracks how the present Republican Party, dominated by the far-right Tea Party, has lost this balance. (I'll be reviewing this book soon.)
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I was relieved when Obama was reelected in 2012, and was able to quickly push through a financial package that included dropping the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $400,000. This could have been a new starting point where Republican leaders in Congress accepted their minority status and the need to compromise with regard to the national political agenda. However, they decided to continued their obstructionist stance toward any and all Obama policy proposals in the hopes of regaining power in 2014 and 2016. The primary reasons they could do this was that they retained control of the House of Representatives in 2012 and were committed to continue abusing the filibuster rule in the Senate. The result was that while the crisis was reduced by the 2012 election, it still exists in the Obama second term, and that brings us to our current time.
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The next page focuses on the current reactionary challenges to the solidification of
a new center-left Obama era and the centrist responses to them. |