To paraphrase: I have a big enough majority, I can define what I want to enact, and gosh darn it people like me. NYT:
Obama should turn up the heat on both the G.O.P’s record of fiscal recklessness and its mad-dog obstructionism. He should stop paying lip service to the fantasy that his Congressional opposition has serious ideas to contribute to the cleanup. Better still, he should publicize exactly what those “ideas” are. …
he must be less foggy on the specifics of what [his] agenda is. Though on Wednesday night he asked Congress to “take another look” at the health care bill, even now it’s unclear what he believes that bill’s bedrock provisions should be. He also said he wouldn’t sign any financial regulatory bill that “does not meet the test of real reform,” yet tentatively praised a House bill compromised by a banking lobby that is in bed with Democrats and Republicans alike. The Senate, of course, has yet to produce any financial reform bill.
Americans like Obama far more than they like any Congressional leader. They might even like more of his policies if he spelled them out. But none of that matters if no Democrat fears him enough to do any of his bidding and no Republican believes there’s any price to be paid for always saying no.
Sounds like good advice to me.
lasthorseman says
I can easily get a redstate account and start firing them all up. If we are not Prof. Igor Panrin’s seven region post United States by November 2010 that is.
lightiris says
spot on. He, too, is on the short list of national treasures as far as I’m concerned. His ability to pare down to the core leaving the true essence of the complicated nuance is always compelling and worthwhile. Would that Obama were listening. I have hope, however, after he schooled the GOP at their retreat on Friday.
marc-davidson says
is a must watch. Obama is a smart and talented politician. Unfortunately he has surrounded himself with advisors, such as Rahm Emanuel, who have done his efforts no favors. What also works against him in this environment is his unreasonable expectation that he can get an overwhelming majority of Congress and the public behind his reforms. A little more of FDR and LBJ, as Frank Rich says, would go a long way.
mike-from-norwell says
is a smart and talented law professor, with no real world or executive experience (and seemed to have missed taking that class in the law of Unintended Consequences along the way – consider that this vaunted Health Care Reform will end up costing the regular employed thousands per year w/ gutting FSA/HSA limits – do the math, especially here in MA with everyone in small business driving a “Cadillac” plan, not that they want to be in that position at all). Thought that during the campaign, and his term so far has not made me change that gut opinion.
stomv says
and this game of pointing out that the current POTUS doesn’t have a resume fit for the job is quite tiresome.
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p>The only people in the world who have a C.V. suggesting that they’ve got the experience to be POTUS are one-term former Presidents. That’s it. Nobody else has ever come close. So, forgive me for the yawn or the eye-rolling every time this comes up (with a “real-world” for bonus, as if anybody is operating in sleepy-dream land).
mike-from-norwell says
quite think what I’m getting at: his entire life experience in private sector was working for an investment newsletter fresh out of Columbia. We graduated at the same time, and believe me, 1983 wasn’t exactly boom times on Wall Street, never mind for a fresh faced kid writing investment advice.
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p>One of my clients is on the short list to have BHO visit their facility on Tuesday in Nashua to “listen” to their problems. Given his background, I don’t even think he’ll have any idea what they are talking about with their day to day struggles.
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p>I would dearly have loved to have posed this question to President Obama last Friday:
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p>You are advocating a Health Care Reform bill that will supposedly reduce costs and have signed onto the Senate approach of taxing “Cadillac” plans. We all know that either this tax will be added onto the premium (since it is imposed onto insurers) or will force employers to seek lower cost, higher deductible alternatives. I assume that the latter is what would play out and is a laudable goal (again ignoring that the average individual would be facing much higher out of pocket expenses). However, at the same time both the House and Senate bills as part of their revenue stream would impose a cap on Flexible Spending Accounts of $2,500 and eviscerate Health Savings Accounts, regardless of whether the FSA is covering an individual or a family. Given that these types of plans serve to allow consumers on a tax favored (Fed, State, and SS) basis to pay for their out of pocket health care expenses, and that these accounts in no way skew towards wealthy individuals, how do you say with a straight face to the middle class that the Health Care Reform bill won’t affect them, when the reality is that their after tax income would be reduced by thousands of dollars?
boourns says
Obama needs to stop trying to be all things to all people. At some point, Obama has to stop hedging his bets on big issues like health care and lead. I don’t mind the LBJ comparison, and a little LBJ in BHO would be welcome, provided it isn’t the LBJ whose political impotence sent us further down the rabbit hole of Vietnam.
howland-lew-natick says
We’re down the rabbit hole, going deep into the Iran and Yemen corridors.
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p>BHO seems to have as much control as GWB. This administration mimics the previous one, often using the same people in positions of power. So much for “Hope” and “Change”.
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p>“Pull them little strings and I’ll sing you a song, I’m your puppet
Make me do right or make me do wrong, I’m your puppet” –Marvin Gaye
kbusch says
Obama’s appetite for bipartisanship seems unquenchable to me. I agree with Rich — “Give it up already!” I tell the Obama on my radio — but Obama, he just won’t give up the bipartisanship dream.
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p>The Senate, being what it is, one must choose a Stick Strategy or a Carrot Strategy.
Obama insists on the second. Do you think it will work?
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p>No, I don’t either.
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p>Rich is not alone in comparing Senator Reid’s leadership unfavorably to that of Lyndon Johnson, but Johnson’s kind of hardball is unlikely to work so well in the current media climate. It’s like Ed O’Reilly’s complaints that Senator Kerry wasn’t behaving more like Daniel Webster and swaying people with his oratory.
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p>We’d like the Senate to become functional again but nostalgia won’t accomplish that.
sabutai says
….Senate President Joe Biden mandates that the Senate become more functional through rulings that end a minority’s ability to stall the business of the nation.
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p>PS: As Robert Caro makes clear, Johnson was excellent at massaging the media while Leader, and even better at having fellow Senators massage it in a direction favorable to him.