Thanks for this perceptive response all of which I agree with - so it must be perceptive!

My take is that Obama is a very strictly disciplined and prioritised political operative.  I suspect his priorities are:

1. Keep the US militarily secure and keep on the right side of the military industrial complex.  He doesn't want to be the next Kennedy.
   
2. Get the economy moving again.
   
3. Do something to improve health care coverage.
   
4. Rein in the banks as much as his donors will allow
   
5. Jobs
   
6. Prevent the Supreme Court going fundamentalist
   
7. Keep on the right side of Likud/AIPAC/Donors/Democratic party grandees
   
8. promote a Green economy
   
9. Reverse the worst ill-effects of Bush's foreign policy
   
10. Develop a foreign policy more in line with the US's real long term interests.

Foreign policy can lose you a lot of votes in the US, but even a good record rarely wins you elections.  Its about the economy, stupid.  It's even more about what the donors and competing corporate centres of power will allow.

Normally I write from a pragmatic perspective respecting the realities of what is possible given the interests of the elites and the structures of power.

That is why some around here consider me a moderate or even a conservative.  Sometime I see things getting so dysfunctional that there is a serious risk of things going seriously awry - e.g. a serious escalation towards war in the middle east.

Then I throw out the pragmatism and gradualism and argue the case for a serious bit of change and say to hell with the establishment if it becomes more dangerous to maintain the status quo than contemplate the risks of radical change.

Then people think I'm getting a little unhinged.

So be it.  The price of being prepared to say the truth as I see it.  It has got me into trouble many times before but at this stage I don't care any more.

The privilege of age.

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