I’m Tired Of People Like Panetta
Apparently he’s got another tell all book about to come out. Timely, Leon, given that we’ve got a hugely important election next month with your “fellow” Democrats in the cross hairs of the party of hate.
I say “fellow” Democrats because Leon has always been a guy of the safe establishment who never had a reformist idea overtake his pandering to the current order of things.
I can speak with some limited contact; Leon was a fellow Santa Claran (think Jesuits, think northern California) in the 50’s a couple of years behind me undergraduate. I didn’t like him then because he had the reputation of an ass kissing pet of some of the key clerics running that show at the time.
Always in their pocket, always held up as a model of the way people should be. I knew he’d ascend to the northern Calif. political establishment and sure enough, after Congress, onto Presidential staffs and leading our intelligence and defense establishments.
Now, in a most untimely way, like Hillary. who at least had a early youthful flirtation with radical thought, he’s finding fault with President Obama. For a while our President was not easily falling for the neo-con, neo-liberal impulse to kick the shit out of our perceived enemies, asking questions later.
I continue to be an admirer of this President who, like Jimmy Carter, has the courage to say things like…..we don’t have a plan yet. The courage to reverse course before engaging us in catastrophic actions which get people killed really dead. The guts to do some thinking out loud on really complex issues, particularly of foreign policy and subject himself to criticism that he is timid or uncertain. Hell, in some cases he is justifiably unclear of the best of many lousy, life ending or ruining initiatives.
I want and have a President who is an adult. Who admits uncertainty and exercises caution before engaging on an issue or solution. America apparent wants an ass kicking cowboy who adheres to the policy of ready, fire aim. They call it being decisive and bold. I call it stupid and disrespectful of the harm that bad decisions can do to our people.
Look what ready, fire, aim got us in the Bush era. Deception. Malfeasance leading up to 9-11. More deception to make it look like Iraq made any sense. Throwing no-strings attached money at the banking industry at the onset of the great meltdown, without accountability. the long war. The list is enormous.
Leon, you and your type are pompous, self-serving protectors of the establishment from which you came and with whom you have earned your stripes as their boy. You conflate your catholic certainty of the “truth” and autocratic infallibility with leadership.
I want candor. I want, yes, human frailty in my leaders. I want humanity in my leadership. President Obama is bright enough to know that he’d become a human punching bag with people like you. I respect his courage and willingness to lead us through the fog in spite of this punishment.
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PP wrote:
Perhaps you’ll recall what the electorate thought of President Carter’s not having a plan.
PP wrote:
Which is why, I suppose, that so many of the Democratic candidates running in seriously contested elections are spending so much time running away from President Obama’s policies. Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate, and the current Kentucky Secretary of State, has promised to work for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, and states that our country’s energy policies should be dependent upon coal, oil and natural gas, pretty good national Republican policies. She says that “We must target burdensome federal regulation of Kentucky’s energy sector, allowing our state to create new middle-class jobs across the state.” (Same source.) Her ads tell Kentucky voters that she isn’t President Obama. I spent last week in the Bluegrass State, and saw some of her failing and flailing campaign. Mrs Grimes was once thought likely to unseat Mitch McConnell, but is now trailing in the polls.
Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) decided that she had other places to be when President Obama made a stop in the Tarheel State. It might be working; she’s currently ahead in the polls. Even solidly liberal msnbc reports that red state Democrats are running away from the President on the campaign trail.
You see, PP, you have described our President as the kind of guy you’d like, the one sitting at the table in the Student Center coffee shop, shooting the bull with other college students about how to fix the problems of the whole world — and, admit it: we’ve all done that! — but what the voters want is a President who will do something radical like actually lead!
Dear Dana……
Please let us know which of the past Presidents after Truman are you referring to as “actually leading” ????
Dana, I was not referring to Carter as not having a plan. I was referring to his similar (to Obama) attempt to talk to Americans as adults about the country’s problems: inflation, the oil shortage due to Iran’s cutoff of supplies, dependence on oil, especially foreign (including Iranian) oil and impending recession. Also of course, his unwillingness, coming out of the Vietnam catastrophe, to initiate more killing with war against Iran to avenge the hostage crisis. He paid the price for talking like an adult to citizens he hoped would think like adults. His calculation there was wrong. American’s wanted Iranian blood for denying them both oil and response to our hostage release demands. And Carter took the hit for the Feds policies, first fueling inflation and then attempts at restraining it with high interest rates.
I was both a witness and “victim” to these policies, both Carter’s and the Fed.
I sat in a meeting, as local Carter campaign leader, and heard he and Gerald Rafshoon make a gutsy presentation at the Houston Petroleum Club to the giants of big oil, telling them his plan (yes, he had a plan) to begin moving America away from carbon dependence. Not a warm reception, to say the least. Then they had the cajones to pitch for campaign money thinking these titans were patriots. Yea, pretty naive.
Later, as a business owner, growing and hiring, I had to swallow the Fed. policy business loan interest rates of 17 and 18 % to grow and sustain my business. Worked my ass off paying those loans down.
“More deception to make it look like Iraq made any sense. ”
We’re basically repeating what we did in Iraq 10 years ago. Use of military force without a clear, concise civilian policy that gives the military tangible objectives.
In short we’re using, “Look how cool this cruise missile barrage is!” diplomacy and it isn’t going to solve anything.
Yep, and Delaware’s own Chris Coons wants to delay any authorization vote until after the election so that people like Chris Coons can’t be held accountable for such a vote.
He could well earn his own chapter in an upcoming volume of Profiles in Cowardice.
If he hasn’t already.
Speaking of talking to American’s like adults about the energy crisis; does any one else remember the Flintstone’s cartoon commissioned by the Govt describing the 70’s oil crisis? I still can hear Fred singing about BDOE’s (Barrel of oil per Day Or Equivalent).
One name only is still the rule.
Panetta is out on the network circuit this week doing a major trash job on President Obama, touting his book. I wonder if this is really about Hillary?
Nate Silver disagrees with progressive populist that next months election is hugely important, Nate does not think it is very important at all
panetta is another in a way-too-long line of ames-philby democrats!!!
I too continue to support the president who could have found a more graceful way of saying that we were still waiting for the ISIS/Syria/Kurdish/Iranian/Iraqi problems to resolve enough that we could take an intelligent course there – no ideal plan exists or can exist, one that will solve all parties’ problems.
Anything to put distance between my community, my family and me and the chasm of Christo-neo-fascism looming in the darkness, represented by the Repubs and the Dem suck-ups, like Panetta who pander to them.