Reviewing the Obama administration

It has 8 months left to run, but here are some retrospective thoughts on almost-the-whole of it.

1. Gitmo's infamous detention camp remains open. This wouldn't necessarily stick in one's craw except that Obama issued an executive order as early as January 22, 2009, with the confetti from the inaugural parties still incompletely cleared away, that said it would be closed within one year.

2. Another one that goes back a ways. Obama early on pressed for a cash-for-clunkers bill, which he signed on June 26th of that first year, supposedly to revive the auto industry. It was a cheap gimmick that had no good effect at all.

3. The whole rebellion in Libya thing was horrendously mismanaged. Absurdly, the administration seems to have thought it was exercising what it called "smart power" in this connection., Nothing smart about it. Ended with the need to use a random video as a cover for whatever the heck actually happened in Benghazi.

4. Waffling on things like the Keystone pipeline extension, and eventually coming down against. Independence from the crude oil we've been importing from the most war-torn parts of the world is a vital national security necessity, to which the administration periodically pays service of the lips. But when something useful might be done in that line, then waffle and back away.

5. Related: Obama's public defenses of the sanctions-ending deal with Iran have been lame and have tended to throw the deal into disrepute. The deal is perfectly sensible, but one wishes for a President who was willing to say, "we're doing this to bring Iranian oil back into the world markets in the full light of day, to worsen the competitive position of the Saudis and help undermine the coherence of OPEC." Obama wasn't and isn't willing to say things that would tick off the Saud family.

There are positive things one might say about Obama's administration too, though. Heck, I hinted broadly at one of them in that fifth comment above, though I wrapped it in a criticism.

Basically the positive things one might say come down to the suspicion things would have been worse under McCain or Romney.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog