Bully Pulpit: President Obama strikes back . . . in a classy kind of way

Robert Kutnner's diary speaks for me: (0.00 / 0)

Link here

An excerpt:

Though the stance is high-minded and the words eloquent and heartfelt, the exercise fails as politics.

After the Democrats' stunning loss of the Massachusetts senate seat once held by Ted Kennedy, you might have expected Obama to change a posture of partisan conciliation that clearly is backfiring. Instead, what we got was an elegant fine-tuning of the same failed strategy.

The address to Congress, and the president's remarks at the Republican Caucus, obviously, are aimed at multiple audiences. Obama seems to think that if he demonstrates to the voters that he is going the extra mile to appease the Republicans, he will win approval from opinion-leaders for delivering on his pledge to "change the tone in Washington," while Republicans will reap the public's scorn for their refusal to meet him halfway. Then he will gain some leverage to pressure the Republicans to at least find some areas of common ground.

Except, politics doesn't work that way. The Republicans get far more mileage out of continuing to block him at every turn. And his increasingly plaintive pleas only make him look weak.

I am too informed to be a Republican

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by: Susan H @ Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 04:36:34 AM CST

There's more~Kuttner's criticism about Obama's choice of words during the Republican retreat (0.00 / 0)

is almost as if he is exhorting  them to become Eisenhower Republicans again...like him:

About the only thing I cared for was the juxtaposition of the words "Republican" and "Retreat." Obama did a fine job of defending his record and sounding high minded and presidential, but again the plea was for sweet reasonableness.

They sent us to Washington to work together, to get things done, and to solve the problems that they're grappling with every single day.

Obama ticked off area after area where he agreed with Republican policies. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan giving that to the Democrats? At one point, insisting that he was open to good ideas from any quarter, Obama declared:

I am not an ideologue. I'm not.
You're not? Then why bother? Ideology is not some arbitrary penchant for clinging to stale ideas. It is a principled set of beliefs about how the economy and society work, and should work.

To be a conservative Republican is to believe that markets work just fine, people mostly get what they deserve, and government typically screws things up. To be a liberal Democrat is to believe that market forces are often cruel and inefficient; that the powerful take advantage of the powerless; and that there are whole areas of economic life, from health care to regulation of finance, where affirmative government is the only way to deliver defensible outcomes for regular people.

That's an ideology, one that progressives are proud to embrace. So why does Obama think it virtuous to disclaim ideology in general? The problem afflicting America is not "ideology." It's the hegemony of rightwing ideology.

Original link to Kuttner's diary here

I am too informed to be a Republican

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by: Susan H @ Mon Feb 01, 2010 at 04:43:43 AM CST

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