Robert Kuttner; Obama-- A Presidency in Peril

Broadcast 5/12/2010 at 8:33 PM EDT (78 Listens, 49 Downloads, 576 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

Check out More Podcasts

Author of A Presidency in Peril, co-editor of American Prospect, Bob Kuttner is a smart, savvy progressive who has a great handle on Obama's failure to deliver his promises or live up to his Rooseveltian potential.

Robert Kuttner (pronounced  /ˈkʌtnər/ ) is an American journalist, writer, and economist. Kuttner is the co-founder and current co-editor of The American Prospect, which was created in 1990 as "an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas," according to its mission statement. He was a twenty year columnist for Business Week and continues to write columns in The Boston Globe. ^{[ 1 ]}

He is also one of five co-founders of the Economic Policy Institute, and currently serves on its board of directors. In 2007, Kuttner joined the non-partisan public policy center Demos as a Distinguished Senior Fellow.

Interview Notes

He's written an excellent, worth-reading book that analyzes the promises and hopes Obama offered versus the realities thus far in his presidency.

It's not only Obama's presidency that is threatened, it's the progressive moment of opportunity that is also threatened.

One clear sign Obama wasn't not bringing about change was when he appointed Robert Rubin's people-- Summers, Geithner, Orszag.

I think Obama's been working on this theory that he can heal America and make great progress by reaching across the aisle, and I think that the theory has failed. It isn't working.

One of Kuttner's favorite quotes illustrates this--

"A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." Robert Frost

The progressive left is surprisingly quiet , not enough activism pushing Obama, calling for reform

Instead of the Robert Rubin banksters, Obama could appoint as economic team people like  Joseph Stieglitz, Sheila Bhaer, Elizabeth Warren, Maria Cantwell.

Blanche Lincoln has undergone a "deathbed conversion." She could just as easily have been a populist, but she decided to be a centrist.

Kuttner; "At a time of economic crisis, populism is up for grabs."

There's Bernie Sanders style left wing populism or right wing populism, which is really extremist.

On bottom up:

Obama had a 13 million person mailing list, 1.3 million volunteers and once he was elected, they were "neutered." Rather than giving them autonomy, they shut them down.

OF course there was that Obama website where people were encouraged to raise issues and then get people to vote to support them, but the issues raised were not ones the administration wanted to hear about, like Marijuana legislation, investigating Bush, so... so much for bottom up Obama.

The downside of the web is that we can become tribal, not work together.

Size: 0 -- 0 hrs, 50 min, 18 sec