American Electorate Voted for Change and Does Not Deserve a Dismissive Attitude and Broken Promises From President Obama
It's disappointing and when served with a dismissive, disdainful attitude by the president, it's revolting.
Aside from Obama's rhetorical ability, when it comes to promises, he appears to be just another politician with this motto: "I promised, but I did not promise to keep my promises."
The NYTimes reports "The administration has no present plans to reopen negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement to add labor and environmental protections, asPresident Obama vowed to do during his campaign, the top trade official said on Monday.
“The president has said we will look at all of our options, but I think they can be addressed without having to reopen the agreement,' said the official, Ronald Kirk, the United States trade representative. It was perhaps the clearest indication yet of the administration’s thinking on whether to reopen the core agreement to add labor and environmental rules."
Jonathan Tasini at Working Life weighs in: "The reason being given is dumb and, frankly, disingenuous: that in the current economic environment, renegotiating NAFTA would discourage trade. That's nonsense. The goal of renegotiating NAFTA was to strengthen labor and environmental provisions; for the record, I just want to reiterate that I think the whole model has to be trashed and that renegotiation cannot change the basic nature of these deals as agreements protecting capital and investment. But, from the narrow perspective of trying to "fix" NAFTA, sure, go ahead. But, the larger point is that trade levels today are being effected by the larger collapse of consumer spending and debt levels--neither of which is going to be improved by not renegotating NAFTA or hurt by renegotiating NAFTA. Indeed, you can argue, as I have, that so-called "Free trade" has depressed wage levels--which means people have less money to spend--and that improving labor provisions will raise wages and, in turn, help peoples' pocketbooks.
"Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio reacts, in a press release sent from his office:
And David Sirota at Open Left adds more in the context of hope versus cynicism:
"Back in February, I wrote a post about President Obama's dismissive attitude towards those who compare his previous promises/declarations with his current actions. At the time, he tried to add levity to the fact that he was appointing Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State despite the fact that the major point of policy contention between Obama and Clinton are their views on foreign policy.
"This prompted ABC's Jake Tapper to wonder, 'Are we supposed to act as if things politicians say during primaries are irrelevant and meaningless?' Now, this same question is relevant yet again, specifically on the issue of Cuba policy and trade.
"Here's the Hill newspaper:
Obama also dismissed Sunday his reversal of policy on the Cuban trade embargo as first reported by ABC News. When asked by an ABC reporter why he had changed his position from 2004, when he said the embargo had failed, Obama joked of a faulty memory. "2004, that seems just eons ago," Obama said. "What was I doing in 2004? Oh, I was running for Senate, there you go."
"Here's the New York Times:
"These are both pretty bad on the substance, but the Cuba example is particularly awful on the rhetoric. Obama, the guy who asks us to hope and to see him as a post-partisan icon of integrity in a post-cynical era, is offering up the most cynical kind of message: He's pretty explicitly saying that past campaign promises aren't to be taken seriously, and really, anyone who does take them seriously is a dolt.
"I don't think you can read that dismissive line about his 2004 senate campaign any other way - and I say that because substantively, nothing has changed in the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Had something really changed in that relationship between 2004 and now, Obama could easily explain his apparent shift on the merits. But since nothing has, he's basically saying reporters - and thus, the public - should know that things promised on a campaign aren't to be taken seriously. He's basically saying, "Ha ha ha, you didn't really think my senate campaign promises were serious, did you?"
"And it's the same thing with the NAFTA shift - nothing has changed in the U.S.-Canada-Mexico relationship between the time campaign promises were made, and today. That means the shift is purely political - and that the promises are being scoffed at.*
"This kind of message is, as I said, genuinely cynical - and really, inappropriate for any politician to express. If we're supposed to believe in democracy, then we have to take campaign promises seriously. Thus, when politicians explicitly tell us that they themselves don't take their own promises seriously, that undermines all the foundational assumptions that our democracy is built on. It's one thing to offer up a logical reason for changing positions - that's AOK by me. It's quite another to change positions and then laugh at people for thinking you were serious about your original position - that's gross."
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