Obama...projected his goals in his book The Audacity of Hope. In Audacity, he discussed how in 2002 he was going to give politics one more shot with a Senate campaign, and if that didn’t work, he was going into corporate law and getting wealthy like the rest of his peer group. He wrote about how passionate activists were too simple-minded, that the system basically worked, and that compromise was a virtue in and of itself in a world of uncertainty. His book was a book about a fundamentally conservative political creature obsessed with process, not someone grounded in the problems of ordinary people. He told us what his leadership style is, what his agenda was, and he’s executing it now.
The news that Elizabeth Warren won’t be leading the CFPB isn’t good news, but it isn’t surprising. ...I suspect it could be tough for her to run for the Senate in a party in which the party leader has already shown he simply cuts against your core beliefs; inherently a Senate Democratic candidate will have to defend the administration’s record of the last few years. Regardless, I hope she continues to project her views widely in the broadest platform possible.
Obama has constructed a Presidency around the glory of radicalism through inaction, and has dominated our politics so thoroughly it’s hard to recall any other mechanisms of governance. Still, It is important to remember what real leadership can look like, which is why Elizabeth Warren can be a pivotal figure. After all, we may need real leaders one day.
---Matt Stoller via Naked Capitalism
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