Rolling Stone interview of President Obama

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Historian Douglas Brinkley  has a lengthy interview of President Barack Obama in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine. Obama and the road ahead (excerpt):

Barack Obama can no longer preach the bright 2008 certitudes of "Hope
and Change." He has a record to defend this time around. And,
considering the lousy hand he was dealt by George W. Bush and an
obstructionist Congress, his record of achievement, from universal
health care to equal pay for women, is astonishingly solid. His
excessive caution is a survival trait; at a time when the ripple and
fury provoked by one off-key quip can derail a campaign for days,
self-editing is the price a virtuoso must pay to go the distance in the
age of YouTube.

Viewed through the lens of history, Obama represents a new type of
21st-century politician: the Progressive Firewall. Obama, simply put, is
the curator-in-chief of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier
and the Great Society. When he talks about continued subsidies for Big
Bird or contraceptives for Sandra Fluke, he is the inheritor of the
Progressive movement's agenda, the last line of defense that prevents
America's hard-won social contract from being defunded into oblivion.

* * *

Paul Nitze, the foreign-policy guru of the Truman administration,
once told me that the problem with historians like myself is that we're
always hunting for a cache of documents to analyze. What our ilk tends
to forget, he chided, is that inaction is also policy. Under this criterion, Obama must also be judged by the things he won't
allow to happen on his watch: Wall Street thieving, Bush-style fiscal
irresponsibility, a new war in the Middle East, the reversal of Roe v. Wade,
the dismantling of Medicare into a voucher program – the list is long.
The offense-driven, Yes-We-Can candidate of 2008 has become the
No-You-Won't defensive champion of 2012. Obama has less a grand plan to
get America working than a NO TRESPASSING sign to prevent 100 years of
progressive accomplishments from being swept away, courtesy of Team
Romney, in a Katrina-like deluge of anti-regulatory measures.

No wonder the right has such a gleam of hatred for Obama – he is the roadblock to their revolution.

But this is what has the right-wing noise machine clutching their pearls and feigning offense today:

As we left the Oval Office, executive editor Eric Bates told Obama
that he had asked his six-year-old if there was anything she wanted him
to say to the president. After a thoughtful pause, she said, "Tell him:
You can do it."

Obama grinned. "That's the only advice I need," he said. "I do very
well, by the way, in that demographic. Ages six to 12? I'm a killer."

"Thought about lowering the voting age?" Bates joked.

"You know, kids have good instincts," Obama offered. "They look at
the other guy and say, 'Well, that's a bullshitter, I can tell.'"

Oh noes! Obama called Mittens a "bullshitter!" Actually, Obama is being far too generous and kind. Mittens is a pathological liar, the most dangerous politician to be a nominee for the presidency in our lifetime.