Not socialist enough, perhaps?
Based on his first year in office, American academics are expressingdisappointment in President Obama’s performance and believe he isheaded toward a “mediocre” presidency.
That’s the term liberal historian Howard Zinn of Boston Universityuses in an article that solicited many viewpoints in the February 1stissue of The Nation magazine. Zinn adds that Obama’s foreign policy is“Hardly any different from a Republican…nationalist, expansionist,imperial and warlike.” And he adds that “mediocre” means “dangerous.”
Conservative Andrew Bacevich, professor of international relationsat Boston University, writes, “Obama’s decision to escalate the war inAfghanistan indicates that he will not break with the existing nationalsecurity consensus. The candidate who promised to ‘change the wayWashington works’ has become Washington’s captive.”
Disappointment also characterizes the view of Glenn Loury, professor ofthe social sciences at Brown University. He says the high point ofObama’s administration was its inauguration “but it has been downhillsince.” He complains “Obama has said little of substance about racialinequality” and “what he has said leaves much to be desired.”
On the subject American militarism, Loury says, “His conduct of the‘war on terror’ and, most distressing, his escalation of ourinvolvement in Afghanistan’s civil war is eerily reminiscent of theapproach of his immediate predecessor. This is not change of any kind,let alone of the kind that we can believe in.”
Sociologist Katherine Newman, of Princeton, says, “The symbolicvictory of our first African-American presidency gave way todisappointment over his centrism, which comes as no great surprisesince Obama never advertised himself as a man of the left. And indeed,he isn’t.”
Marcia Angell, M.D., a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Medical School,writes, “count me among those who are disappointed in his (Obama’s)first year.” The reason: “He seems to lack the courage to push for thefundamental reforms necessary to deal with the enormous problems weface, and instead appeases the very forces that have gotten us intothis mess.”