The voices are getting louder, the polls not looking so good and the attacks more and more strident.
Obama is facing the test of whether all that smooth rhetoric whilst campaigning - and speeches since then aided by a teleprompter - are translating into something being seen to being actually done. The report card to date isn't all that impressive - especially as one sees policies of the Bush Administration continuing.
With Obama's attempt to introduce health reform, he is encountering brickbats galore apart from offensive attacks from various quarters.
Bob Herbert, writing in "Voices of Anxiety" in The NY Times, perhaps reflects thinking in the US:
"The president may be sanguine, but the same cannot be said of the general public, including some of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters. The American people are worried sick over the economy, which may be sprouting green shoots from Ben Bernanke’s lofty perspective but not from the humble standpoint of the many millions who are unemployed, or those who are still working but barely able to pay their bills and hold onto their homes.
This is the reality that underlies the anxiety over the president’s ragged effort to achieve health care reform. Forget the certifiables who are scrawling Hitler mustaches on pictures of the president. Many sane and intelligent people who voted for Mr. Obama and sincerely want him to succeed have legitimate concerns about the timing of this health reform initiative and the way it is unfolding."
Glenn Greenwald also takes up the issue over at Salon:
"Paul Krugman has an excellent column today arguing that progressives have backlashed so intensely over the prospect of Obama's dropping the public option because -- for reasons extending far beyond specific health care issues -- they no longer trust the President. Citing Obama's steadfast continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, the administration's extreme coziness with crisis-causing banks, and the endless retreats on health care, Krugman says that "a backlash in the progressive base . . . has been building for months" and that "progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it."
Obama is facing the test of whether all that smooth rhetoric whilst campaigning - and speeches since then aided by a teleprompter - are translating into something being seen to being actually done. The report card to date isn't all that impressive - especially as one sees policies of the Bush Administration continuing.
With Obama's attempt to introduce health reform, he is encountering brickbats galore apart from offensive attacks from various quarters.
Bob Herbert, writing in "Voices of Anxiety" in The NY Times, perhaps reflects thinking in the US:
"The president may be sanguine, but the same cannot be said of the general public, including some of Mr. Obama’s most ardent supporters. The American people are worried sick over the economy, which may be sprouting green shoots from Ben Bernanke’s lofty perspective but not from the humble standpoint of the many millions who are unemployed, or those who are still working but barely able to pay their bills and hold onto their homes.
This is the reality that underlies the anxiety over the president’s ragged effort to achieve health care reform. Forget the certifiables who are scrawling Hitler mustaches on pictures of the president. Many sane and intelligent people who voted for Mr. Obama and sincerely want him to succeed have legitimate concerns about the timing of this health reform initiative and the way it is unfolding."
Glenn Greenwald also takes up the issue over at Salon:
"Paul Krugman has an excellent column today arguing that progressives have backlashed so intensely over the prospect of Obama's dropping the public option because -- for reasons extending far beyond specific health care issues -- they no longer trust the President. Citing Obama's steadfast continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, the administration's extreme coziness with crisis-causing banks, and the endless retreats on health care, Krugman says that "a backlash in the progressive base . . . has been building for months" and that "progressives are now in revolt. Mr. Obama took their trust for granted, and in the process lost it."
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