Left Righting Pro Left

Obama partisans are reportedly now helping their Democratic counterparts on the professional left to work through their worsening case of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Said former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, “There’d be a whole lot less Obamamania going around if certain Democrats would stop failing to understand that way back in 2009 when the president shared with America the wise counsel that everybody should just join him in looking straight ahead and not backward, his motive wasn’t only to judiciously avoid all the recent illegal spying on Americans and all the torture and other kinds of widespread war crimes and the countless other kinds of murder the Bush people have gone on to get away with.

“Nor was he only telling the nation not to look back at the Wall Street crime spree that tanked the economy or at the government’s complicity in all the felonious and otherwise immoral behavior.

“What all the Obamaphobes need to keep telling themselves if they hope to ever get over their hysteria is that President Obama was also advising Americans not to look back at his actions and promises before he became president.

“I mean, what liberal wouldn’t be a bit miffed about the president’s treatment of Bradley Manning and an unprecedented number of other prosecuted whistleblowers if he or she kept looking backward at all candidate Obama’s talk in 2008 about how much he would support whistleblowing when he became president.

“Even I might fault him a little bit for involving me in his unprecedented campaign of government secrecy if I dwelled on all his promises to make his administration the most transparent ever.

“The solution, though, is pretty simple: if you want to get past irrationally hating a president from your own party over something like Guantanamo’s still being in business, stop looking backward at all his promises to shut the thing down.”

Added Mr. Gibbs’ successor Jay Carney, “The president also clearly had in mind that America would not look backward to a time when America followed the rule of law, when the middle class somehow managed to thrive even though the upper-class job creators weren’t outhriving them to the enormous degree they are today, when corporations weren’t persons, when banks could fail, when the press still called Republicans on it when they strayed too far from the truth.

“You’re just asking for disenchantment with a president when you start comparing the terrible times he’s overseeing with the so much better days the country has seen thanks to its adhering to some seemingly simple common sense principles.

“Many Obama haters are even making the mistake of looking all the way backward to the Gilded Age and making themselves crazy wondering why the president hasn’t learned the simple lesson from history that the plutocrats will ruin your society every time if you let them.

“But come on. The president’s only looking forward. He ran on that slogan for goodness sake. How can you expect him to muster the courage to take on the plutocrats like FDR did when he doesn’t have access to that past example?

“The president’s choice of John Brennan for CIA chief only ruffles your feathers if you fail to remember that the president is not looking backward at all Mr. Brennan’s championing of torture. The president’s surrounding himself with men and women but mostly men from Wall Street only gets your goat if you ignore the simple truth that the president is not focused on all the harm Wall Street has caused the country and the world.

“And by the way, when you’re looking forward, not only are you not looking backward, you’re also not looking at the present moment. When the Obama haters start criticizing the president for any new decisions he takes, I think maybe they should ask themselves how fair it is to judge the president’s performance in a time frame he’s openly said he’s not concerned about.”