When is the deep blue Seattle culture going to realize that Bush is out of office? The usual rule is after 6 months, the new guy owns it.

BO has been pres for two years and you still blame Bush for everything!

Fact: The country is center right. Most people reject Obama, Pelosi and Reids statist policies. There will be change come November.

Keep blaming Bush if you want. The economic pain felt by so many and fear and worry for the future by the rest has pierced the traditional Seattle insulation.

I just hope conservatives don't screw it up again like last time.

In which Berger becomes Ted Van Dyk. Can Lou Guzzo status be far behind? What a pile of dreck this column was.

Its really nice to read a level-headed piece about President Obama instead of the usual distortions from both the right and left.

When he was a candidate, I predicted that a lot of people were over-expecting of him and were going to be disappointed because they were believing their own ultra-liberal hype.

Obama is a centrist which as far as I'm concerned is what we need. I seem him as balancing the social safety net needs with trying to right a free market economy that was crashing because of its own excesses. If the free-market advocates had any sense, they would see him for what he is, a savior.

In fact, the right has less reason to criticize Obama than does the left.

As for the distortions of the Republican extremists, he's no more a statist or socialist than his predecessor, George Bush. After all the latter hugely expanded the apparatus of the Federal government and brought about the Medicare drug benefit, the largest expansion of Medicare since its creation.

And of course greatly expanded the federal deficit through the voodoo economics of cutting taxes while increasing spending. Wow, what a genius! And to think that some people what to take us back to that style of governing.

When I read the world "realistic" from Mossback I reach for my hair clippers the way a German expressionist poet did for a gun he heard the word "kultur": Obama IS Bush III. He took over the entire national military industrial complex lock stock and barrel; there isn't a Rubinesque banker he does not love to throw a TARP to. Obama has broken 20 + of these famous promises
see:
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/2010/08/obama-meter-updated.html
and he will go along with General Petreaus and stay in A'stan another ten years, and in General Mattis, commander of CENTCOM he has someone who voices the old Amurrican sentiment: "The only good [fill in the blank] is a dead [fill in the blank]" So what if the rhethoric is easier on the ears of the educated, the coloring more pleasing than Bush pig pink and white? What is amazing the millions of sheeples who fell for this HOPE dope: "Yes we can"... sell the old coke like the new coke.

mikerol, who was Bush ll?

Dreck is right. Mossburger wants the left to stop being the left and become the center? WTF?

Obama: Promised to:
*) close Gitmo... nope
*) get us out of Iraq ... nope 50,000 "advisors in mil uniforms still there."
*) clean up financial houses... nope used tax payer money to bail out Goldman Sachs. Not a single prosecution for all those fraudulant CDC's sold. Didn't enact meaningful reform...
*) Jobs.. did I mention jobs? Yeah he's continued to help export jobs.
*) A health care bill only an insurance company could love. Isn't that the reason we are in this mess?

In the next primary he can count on me working actively against him. He's a one term president. The right will never vote for him, the center left long ago and now the left is deserting him. He'll be a footnote in history books as the first black president with a citation that the coming financial crisis phase 2 was preventable yet he did nothing to stop it.

I criticize Obama for:

a) on occasion being a weasel. He will make a strong statement, then some group will criticize it, then he will back down and/or back pedal. He is the President of the United States and he should be providing leadership.

b) starting off with such weak/compromised starting points when proposing legislation. He makes proposals for legislation that, I guess, are intended to appeal to some Republicans for an appearance of bipartisanship and then no (or 1-2) Republicans vote for it anyway, so what was the point of the compromised starting point?

c) not following through on promises. Is Gitmo closed? No. Has he followed through on his transparency pledge? No, he seems as keen on keeping secrets as W. The list goes on. I don't expect him to keep all "promises", but didn't he sign something that saying that he would close Gitmo on his first day as president.

d) continuing (in my opinion, unconstitutional) policies instituted by W in the wake of 9/11. For example, if I, a US citizen, leave the country and return, US Customs can seize my laptop or PDA for no reason and return it to me later, at their leisure.

I expected him to do a lot of what he is done. He said that he would be shifting focus to Afghanistan and that is what he did. I didn't expect him to be so weak.

Thank you for writing this, Knute. My thoughts exactly.

Every time I pay attention to the latest BS scandal, it seems that Obama is the only grown up in the room surrounded by screaming children.

According to Daily Beast, Obama has accomplished more of the progressive agenda in 18 months than Clinton and Carter did in 12 years combined.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-28/obamas-winning-streak-peter-beinart-on-his-historic-gains/

So what is everyone complaining about?

Thanks, Knute, for the good column, especially this line: "Not Obama's latest flubs or faux flubs, but because of seeing how a man whose job it is to face real problems is so beset by fake ones."

Americans, both liberal and conservative, really do need to grow up, as Todd Purdum suggested in his outstanding Vanity Fair piece, and realize that deep-seated problems take time to resolve. That welfare office story was perfect.

Sadly, most of the comments here prove Knute's point. It reminds me of the 2000 campaign when a good friend voted for Nader complaining that Gore and Bush were just opposite sides of the same coin. How sadly untrue. Thanks for writing this Knute, and I appreciate your comments on KUOW too.

Patrick Long

I have to agree with 'another view' and the post that defines Obama as a centrist. I was never an Obama acolyte and felt he was over-hyped in expectations that much of the media fed on and added to the frenzy. What he DID do when running for office is bring the young out to participate in the electoral process well beyond anything seen since Ronald Reagan.

As to his Presidency, it's historic by any measure, and he IS the inheritor of what was once referred to as 'guns and butter' profligate spending by government without corresponding revenues to pay for a war in addition excesses in the financial sector that added to the havoc in the economy.

Whether you like the guy or don't, I will say the same thing I said about Bush as much as I couldn't tolerate his policies and intellectual acumen, this guy has more information than I do to make decisions and I hope that he is doing the right thing for the country. And I think he did the right thing not to let the financial sector collapse.

Obama has yet to disappoint me with his policies - his predecessor, well, that's another matter. . . but one thing he did do toward the end of his Presidency that was historic and will benefit the world well beyond our lifetime is creating the world's largest marine life sanctuary in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

As Knute pointed out, we're not going to agree with everything any President does.

This is really disappointing. To lump all criticism of Obama together as coming from the left no matter what the issue, to presume that criticism is utopian or even communist just because it is to the left of a center-right Democrat, is extremely anti-intellectual.

The Obama admin cares more about what Fox News says than the NAACP (see the Sharrod case). I don't believe anyone can find a quote from Gibbs that is as critical of the Tea Party movement as he is of "the left." If it weren't for Nancy Pelosi, Obama's admin would have even caved on health care. His foreign policy depends upon a constellation of votes from Republicans and blue dog Democrats, since if he were to rely upon his own party's votes in Congress alone he would not be able to continue to sustain the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, Obama will compromise with the right but stand up to the left. And I guess people who hoped for more are stupid?

Thank you Knute. Well said. I think we elected a very smart, ethical, and pragmatic man to our highest office. The art of politics is about achieving what is possible. I can only imagine where we would be with McCain/Palin driving the bus right now....

Knute, my sentiments exactly (but better expressed)!

Very well done, timely too. Thank you for popping off appropriately, Knute!

The self-serving pronouncements from too many political angles is that "the country" is on their side. You can see it even in comments here.

In fact (my belief), ALL of us pushed the big Reset Button and nobody really knows what to do about that except worry that their influence has become old and irrelevent.

Underlying our opinion shift is a desire for our leaders to lead, and for does to do. Each of us have these roles to some extent, and it appears that most people are actually trying to do their parts -- which fuels frustrations with the big guys who prefer to obviously disagree just to disagree.

Decisions being taken by Obama's team, just as Knute points out, are working through enormous problems that need time and continued effort to resolve. Structures must be rebuilt if they have been abused, ignored, or exploited for the short term. Our society did all these things through several Administrations, both Republican and Democrat.

Life is incremental.

We will get through this.

Amen. Mossback nailed it.

Politically, the guy is an Eisenhower for our time, a non-crazy friend to the establishment. A clear and better alternative to the John Birchers who have taken control of the Republican Party. That works for me in the present enviroment. But the center is defined by the sides, and the Right is constantly moving their positions further to the Right as the Demcrats compromise to make a deal. In the meantime the Right charactorises him as a dangerous radical, further moving the center rightward. Reminding him of his promises and hoping that he'll at leas give lip service to those promises that require Congressional action doesn't seem all that much to ask. I'll work for his re-election but give money to progressive Congressional candidates that will move the Center back in a progressive direction. Frankly, this kind of circular firing squad piece is less helpful than pointing out the structural constraints that keeps the status quo on top-like filibusters and the rigidly disiplined Republican Party allied with the corrupt conservative Democrats in Congress. The left is the least of Obama's problems, but punching hippies is just too easy. You're better than that, Knute.

When the history of the Obama presidency is written it’s likely that it will catalog the number and diversity of major issues that were either already queued up or were engaged within a few months. Without assigning importance or fussing over semantics, here’s a quick list:

Immediate US financial crisis and all of its ramifications – stimulus spending, bailouts, auto company loans, subprime lending and mortgage defaults, unemployment

Long-term economic health – regulatory reform, increasing federal debt, rising costs of healthcare, Social Security and Medicaid solvency, job producing policies, bi-lateral trade agreements

Global economic security - China’s currency policy, regulation of international financial markets

Environmental sustainability – climate change policy, deep sea oil drilling, alternative energy

Natural disaster response (recovery and reconstruction) – Haiti quake, Pakistan flood

Ending major wars – Iraq, Afghanistan-Pakistan

Preventing new wars – Palestine-Israel, Iran-Israel, spreading international terrorism, Mexican drug war

Halting and reversing nuclear arming – New START, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, North Korea

Global sustainable development (the Millennium Development Goals) – poverty reduction, food security, health care, education

Other domestic issues – immigration, Gitmo, Supreme Court nominations, mosques and 9/11

Then there are the “political” issues: a dysfunctional Congress, Tea Party, corporate and union money in elections, cleaning up DC. Add to these the personal issues that have dogged the President: his birth place, his Muslim faith, his former minister, his former friend and “radical” community organizer.

I’ve probably missed a few. The point is that this President has had and continues to have a very full plate. Historians will debate whether this is different than past presidencies. But, in my view, it is a remarkable assignment for any mortal to undertake. And we should be somewhat forgiving when we critique the President’s performance on our favorite issue.

to: "NickBob" re Ike. He and the Dulles brothers were the one who deposed Mossadegh, installed the Shah which led to the Ayatollahs in Iran - their utter disgust with what Western Modernism had brought them, starting with the French and the Brits. Ike also destroyed Guatemalan Democracy. Now I doubt that Obama will do anything along the lines: but as a creature of the military complex he would have no choice. As to his accomplishments being progressive: I think if I were a health insurance executive I would dance around the maypole at the prospect of 25 million new forced customers; there is a tad of re-regulation going on. Wall Street figures went up the day it passed, and they also did a dance. This is main stream republicanism, to the right of Clinton. But those were not what he promised when he became brand Obama, was it.
A one every hundred year opportunity was missed to gain control of the capitalist beast at whose mercy 90+ of the population lives. He went with Rubin, he ought to have gone with Stieglitz and nationalize all those huge financial institutions who were bankrupt that bankrupted so many, that created havoc around the world. That is chiefly what Obama will be remembered for, that failure to seize that historic opportunity.
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

and to: "fgruben"
Bush I was George Herbert Walker 1988-1992, ended in the Keating Five and Savings and Loan debacle which cost the tax payers I forgot how many hundred billion. Bush II started with the Halliburton scandal, his chief backer, and ended with the near end of US capitalism,
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bush_administration_scandals

http://www.netrootsmass.net/hughs-bush-scandals-list/

I have no great liking for Christopher Hitchens, but one of his observations about this country is truly priceless: "No country in the world regains its virginity as quickly as the United States." Ah that loss of innocence, doesn't even last half a generation and the next set of sheeples is ready to believe in a brown paper bag or plastic.
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

Anotherview: You think BO is a centrist? You must make only 'left' hand turns when you drive.

Most of you are victims of chronic insulated liberal delusion.

I'm not sure what the progressive agenda is, so would someone please direct me to a web site that explains their goals. This is a serious question because I have no idea what it means to be a progressive. Is there one definition of this political movement, or is it just a collection of groups with related goals. What would a perfect progressive form of government be? That is, what changes in our current government would have to be made to satisfy the progressive movement once and for all?

to eastkingcountyrednecklogger:

Bush and Cheney ruled! They steadily sucked the life out of this country. They lied, claimed "executive privilege," when they didn't want to be held accountable for their political "moves;" they fully intended to lease Wilderness Land to corporate logging, mining, oil drilling, and shale mining that pollutes nearby streams, rivers, and subterranean water.In fact, if you research Bush and Cheney's transgressions, they number in the hundreds. These, above are just a very few of their disgraceful and unethical shenanigans.

They would have gone through with the leasing plan (unbeknown to the public--that us) if it wasn't for Robert Redford's Senate testimony and the cleverness of a single college student from Utah. The police were ordered to arrest the student, but when they put him in the back seat, both policemen said, "Thank you for doing this for Utah."This is a great and true story, by the way. I could go on, but you probably will believe just what you want to believe. Research from credible and ethical journalists is the key to learning the truth--that is, if you want to learn the truth.

The list of Bush and Cheney's activities while in office (if not illegal, were, most certainly, immoral), numbering in the hundreds. President Obama spent the entire first year of his Presidency overturning many of the previous policies of the Bush Administration because Obama knew these policies were harmful to the concerned citizens of this country, and he had citizens support, especially from the Northwest states, even though others' watched Fox News who accused Obama of "taking" Wildnerness land," as if the land was for Obama's private use!. Obama also spent too much time trying to get through this Health Care agenda because, I think, he believed that 43 million people really needed it, and it was, after all, promised during his campaign. Wasn't that promise part of the reason he got elected?

Now people don't want health care, they want jobs! I don't blame them; getting a job in the U.S. is nearly impossible, especially for people between the ages of 18-45. Do you entertain the thought that this is Obama's fault? Job loss in the U.S.A. has been declining since 1990 when outsourcing became "the thing to do" for corporations. 12,000 jobs per month were lost during the first years of Bush's presidency and the rates per month grew greater every year of his presidency. In fact, he gave TAX CUTS to corporations who moved to other countries. We have been "outsourced" by corporate interests, and you want to pin this all on Obama!

Are you aware that on January 21, 2010, The U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on corporate spending on candidates and gave corporations "citizenship?"
Now candidates will be bought by unending corporate money, and your vote will be "puny" compared to the rights of corporations--corporations whose motto is: "It may SOUND fine to be patriotic, but when I can pay an off shore worker 30 cents an hour, why should I stay in the U.S.A., whose workers want several dollars per hour?" Those jobs are not coming back, and you want Obama, in two years, to produce work for more than 15 million U.S. workers who are out of a job?

Perhaps a more experienced presidential leader might have been found for this term, but I don't believe there is anyone who can fix this country in two years when this country has been headed for ruin for the past 20 years. I know that if I don't vote for Obama next time, the return of the Republican Party will, ultimately set the scene for a Corporate Takeover of the actually human American citizens. By the way, look up the word "sociopath" on the Internet; you will find that "sociopath and "Corporate power" mean the same thing.

Did you notice that every time anyone questioned the Iraqi war, that person was denounced for being unpatriotic? No one dared to argue with the Bush administration and/or Fox News. Bush and Cheney, literally, dictated their agenda, without considering the needs or wants of the citizens. If you read Mein Kamf and the writings of Josef Goebels, Minister of Propaganda in Hitler's Germany, you would find many of these same quotes actually used by the Bush administration and, of course, many "patriotic" members of Fox News.

Herb: here is the Wikipedia definition of "progressivism" ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism

in Mexico this is called "desarrollo"

"http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desarrollo

it is an attitude that you can achieve social democracy via reform rather than revolution, a compromise formation going back to at least the 30s. it posits a tamed Capitalism instead of the kind of gilded age wild west capitalism that returned with a vengeance starting with Reagan.
cheerios.

http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name

221maggiem41: You can breath now.

oh, and just one question. ya got a job?

Actually, yes. I write books, teach special education students, and write English Language Arts curriculum for public and private schools. When I am writing books in the summer, I employ an editor--even before the book is edited by the publishing company. It is obvious why; I write too fast and make too many errors. I didn't even breathe once for this comment.