Not surprisingly, I'm with John Cole. Roger Simon's takedown of Eric Alterman's article about liberal discontentment with the president is pretty damn sharp. Simon writes:
I admit, I did not go on to read the remaining 17,000 words of the article — I am saving it for my next coma — and that is because I had trouble grappling with the phrase “significant accomplishments notwithstanding.” If you toss significant accomplishments out the window, how would FDR or Abraham Lincoln or George Washington do by that standard?
Aren’t significant accomplishments what presidents are supposed to accomplish? And isn’t it more than a little unfair to toss those accomplishments aside and then judge those presidents?
No. Not if you judge them by the loss of their mojo. Which is how some liberals are now judging Obama.
There's an attitude in some progressive circles suggesting that if we constantly hector the president about everything, it'll actually move some mountains. What's totally ignored in this approach are the political consequences -- the self-defeating aspect of demonizing the only president in decades who's more closely aligned with a progressive worldview. Which is why I've been shouting about "smart accountability" for more than a year now.
Smart accountability, if you're just joining us, is holding the president accountable in a way that doesn't undermine the movement by inadvertently weakening the president and enabling the Republicans. Unfortunately, constant badgering by some of the cool kids in the progressive blogosphere directed at anyone else who says something nice about the president appears to be the order of the day. Political consequences be damned. And now, anyone who points out the political consequences, like suggesting the potential of President Palin, is shouted down by the cool kids as well.
Shit.
Alterman seriously wrote "significant accomplishments notwithstanding." Ugh. Here's Alterman's full quote:
“Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.”
A disappointment other than, you know, the significant accomplishments. Has it really come to this?