Andrew Sullivan is Right: Obama Has Governed as a Conservative

From AlterNet:

Last week, Newsweek magazine and The Daily Beast published an article by Andrew Sullivan, “How Obama’s Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics,” which excoriated left-wing critics for failing to appreciate how much Obama has accomplished, while at the same time trying to convince conservatives that Obama is not a liberal, let alone a socialist, and that, in fact, he has governed as a conservative. The fact that these two critiques are internally inconsistent has somehow managed to escape Mr. Sullivan.

More here.

So the rest of the piece is pretty much a take down of Sullivan's assertion that liberal Obama critics should give the President more credit for all he has "accomplished." And, of course, that's a fairly easy task, given that, as Sullivan correctly observes, Obama is a conservative; liberals don't have much reason to celebrate conservative accomplishments, unless, of course, such conservative successes actually accomplish some real good, which actually happens from time to time. But, short of keeping Great Depression II at bay, and maybe taking out Bin Laden, in spite of the fact that it was an extrajudicial killing of an unarmed and unresisting man, all of Obama's accomplishments are decidedly conservative.

Okay, I'll also credit Obama with signing the legislation that ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, but that's the thing: Obama, as a Democrat, must necessarily salute the so-called social issues, a.k.a. "identity politics," whatever you want to call it. But on issues like national security and economics, you know, everything else, he's conservative. Indeed, most of the Democratic Party is conservative in this way, too, embracing the so-called "Washington Consensus" that neoliberalism's "free markets" are always the best way to go, that continually enacting legislation that makes the rich richer is the best way to "economic prosperity," a term I don't think I, personally, understand any more.

So I'm happy that at least one conservative appears to get it.

On the other hand, Andrew Sullivan is English and gay, which means he can't possibly share most American conservatives' xenophobia and homophobia. Sullivan's probably not a racist, either, so that further distances him from the GOP rank and file. Indeed, as a man whose accent makes plain that he wasn't raised within the context of the US's longstanding culture wars, he very likely doesn't even have the typical American conservative knee-jerk and tribal revulsion toward liberals, who they perceive as dirty, foul, and immoral. That is, he may very well self-identify as conservative, and, indeed, he is, but he's not part of the tribe, and therefore not possessing the thought-filter that makes conservative Obama look like Stalin or Chairman Mao when seen through the eyes of the truly tribal.

I'm not really expecting many right-wingers to respond favorably to his argument.

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