Obama does have a good mind and temperament. Given the state of popular belief in the USA, it is hard to see who could have been elected who would have a better opportunity. Sanity has very few supporters today in the USA. Obama has the opportunity to shift the popular views of these matters. He needs to start driving important points home with rhetorical sledge hammers rather than dropping coy hints that he really does understand the problem. It is hard to see how having more Republican influence in Congress in 2010 and/or having a Republican president in 2012 would help. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
he has to avoid moving so fast that he is vulnerable to being defined by his opponents as some black radical out to subjugate the existing social structure.
I say this wholly unrelated to the rest of the discussion: Not gonna happen. How do you go about portraying Obama as a black radical now if it failed miserably during the campaign, when people didn't know a lot about him? And how do you do that now when he's sitting on a +40 net approval in the face of a -30 net disapproval for the Republicans?
That ship has sailed. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Obama got a pass during the campaign because there really was no basis for calling him a "black radical." Best they could do was to attempt to smear him with guilt by association with his preacher, whose great "sin" was to see and diagnose the class and race biases, structures and institutions in our society. Obama himself had been very careful to avoid ever doing anything that could be used to label him a radical. In fact he is not a radical. He represents the essence of the establishment view of what the USA should be--wonderful opportunity that does not challenge that very establishment.
But, if he is seen to do by choice things that attack that establishment, that will change in a New York minute. I am reminded of the Mexican proverbial saying: "Mata un pero y siempre se llama 'matapero'!" (Kill one dog and forever be called a dog-killer!) That is why it is important that he be seen to be forced into nationalization of banks, etc.
That said, I do not think he is at all eager to do anything that undercuts the financial establishment. I can only hope that he understands quickly enough that there is no substitute for directly confronting the core problems of the financial situation: insolvency and the criminality that led to it. I prefer that hope to councils of despair. If he fails to rise to that challenge, and soon, then we all are in for a very tough decade or two. It might prove a blessing to have Geithner laughed off the stage early on. It could be the kind of slap in the face Obama needs to force him to confront the true depth of the problem. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
