Another explanation that I sadly believe to be much more realistic is that Obama never had pure motives. He was just playing the game (as any candidate must to win the support of either establishment party), and he took many millions of hopeful people along for the ride.
It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...
I wonder, though, if perhaps a lot of "power decisions" are made at the margin.
(I mean "making decisions at the margin" in the way that economists use the term. For example: I wish cheese was free. But, in real life, I have a choice between $2.49 cheese and $2.19 cheese. So I buy the cheaper cheese, not the free cheese. Because the free cheese doesn't exist.)
If the President has to make small decisions about "the lesser of two evils", then how much power does he really have?
For example: He said he would close Guantanamo Bay, but didn't. One theory is that he was full of shit. He's just a tool. Another theory is that there wasn't the political capital to accomplish such a thing. As in: there was enough push-back from his own party... he didn't want to alienate some of his friends... as in, he couldn't afford to. So he says: "Screw it. A couple hundred people in hell isn't worth my career if I can focus on other things that can benefit more people."
(I'm not trying to be an apologist for Obama here. I think Washington is pretty horribly corrupt in both parties...)
So I'm left to wonder: Sure, no smart politician is going to burn his own career for a couple hundred foreigners that the citizens hate anyway (I guess...). But why is Gitmo still open? What does it accomplish? (I keep going around in circles trying to figure out why anyone loves Gitmo...)
A president "spends power" at the margins. He spent a lot of power on Obamacare. (You call in favors, you do the horse-trading...) But he has spent no power against the "Security Industrial Complex". I guess it's not something that he cares to achieve. People are calling it "Bush's 4th term". I understand the contractors profit from "Fear of Terrorists". And I'm sure there are some military / intelligence people who are actually hard-core about it. But, outside of that.... who the fuck loves it? I just don't get it... Washington has wrapped itself into a self-sustaining engine of fear...
... oy vey. And here we're not supposed to be getting all political on HN... :-/
Lesser of the two evils, I don't think its that polarized, there are grey areas. Not closing down Gitmo because of the lack of political will from congress is understandable but there are other decisions such as curbing the hunger strike with forced nasal feeding every day is another decision. I agree it's in the rule book that says if the body weight index drops beyond a point, use nasal feeding but I guess when you make such a decision you can weigh the differences between a medical decision and a hunger protest and deal with them a little differently.
Besides, if you are the president and your campaign promise was to close a prison. Keeping in mind that many people there are held without charges for over a decade and a few are already cleared to be let go but are still there for reasons I don't understand, if you can't do this being a president in 2 terms then perhaps you just can't do it, least you can do is make way for someone who can.
Agreed, he was bought and paid for like nearly all the politicians that came before him.
It's kind of amusing on some level because the trope goes: Let's demand xyz be done about xyz, but let's not do/think of what we can to work on xyz ourselves within our own local communities before we are given permission by the establishment, who made xyz possible, to impose it on everyone else.
If by rhetoric you refer to Obama's campaign:
The fact he didn't act as he said he would doesn't lessen the values of the rhetoric he held.
The arguments, the conviction, the ideology developed during his campaign holds the same values today as it did yesterday. The earth is round and it isn't less so if crooks say it.
It does reduce the faith in the hope and change that was promised by our president. After all he does not walk the talk. He is the do as I say president not as I do. After all he does send his children to private school while preaching the virtues of public education. He is no different than any other politician in that regard, a hypocrite.
Past performance or lack there of is an indicator of future performance. Obama has not been able to deliver on most of his promises from closing Gitmo to bringing this nation together. Does anyone believe he is capable of doing the right thing? Just talking about it does not count.
Yes. He had one motive, to get elected. He said whatever would convince money to contribute, and he said whatever would convince people to vote. And none of it meant a thing.
This is true for all politicians. Even the one you think is yours.
Not speaking of a tremendously high bar for purity here. I would have settled for someone who didn't think it was ok to kill and imprison people without trial, psychologically torture whistleblowers, and attempt to spy on the digital communications of everyone on the planet.
It's important for people who believed in Obama's rhetoric to stop making excuses and realize that they were conned. Fool me once, shame on you...