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If Obama wants to get anything done, he needs to start breaking some GOP heads. This is not the time to be making nice.
I hate to say this, but unless President Barack Obama toughens up pretty soon, his presidency could be in trouble. It’s too early to be sure, but the warning signs are beginning to accumulate. If unemployment, now at 9.5 percent, keeps rising, Democrats could lose House and Senate seats in the midterm elections next year, and, though Obama is likely to remain personally popular, support for his policies could collapse.
That is why it is so urgent for the president to abandon his instinctual tendency toward conciliation and compromise, to throw bipartisanship to the winds and take advantage of the opportunity opened up by Al Franken’s long-delayed arrival in the Senate as the 60th Democratic vote. Franken’s victory means that Obama’s party now has the super-majority required to ram through the president’s legislative agenda over weak Republican opposition.
Moreover, as the antics of Sarah Palin, John Ensign and Mark Sanford illustrate, the GOP is currently leaderless and imploding. Now is the time for Obama and the Democrats to strike—to enact sweeping health care reform, programs to address global warming and, most important of all, a second round of economic stimulus to put millions of unemployed people back to work, even if it drives up the deficit to even more gargantuan levels.
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote recently in the New York Times, “We have the Obama stimulus plan, which aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year. That’s much better than nothing, but it’s not remotely enough.” Or, as a headline in the Washington Post proclaimed, “Rising Joblessness Blunts President’s Plan for Recovery.”
The trouble with Obama is that he doesn’t like to be seen doing the dirty work of domestic politics. He’d rather be delivering high-minded speeches about reducing the size of American and Russian nuclear arsenals than steamrolling the Republicans.
Some of his aloofness, of course, is tactical. As Obama’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, points out, the stimulus package passed earlier this year is designed to be more effective next year than this year—which might turn things around and get the economy going again just in time for the 2010 elections. But that’s quite a gamble.
And even if things work out the way they hope, I think Obama’s problem—which I complained about during the primary season last year—is deeper than that. I think Obama wants to be seen as a nice guy who reaches out to his enemies and wins them over rather than kicking their tails. He’s willing to roll up his sleeves, but he doesn’t want to get his hands bloody.
In most circumstances, that’s a desirable trait for a politician. But there are times when a baseball bat, not a palm leaf, is required.
With the U.S. mired in its deepest economic slump since the Great Depression, this is one of those times.
Jack White is a regular contributor to The Root.
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Uhhhh. . . . .If you say so.
The American experiment, begun 230+ years ago, proves that true greatness rests at the intersection of constructive conflict. At the founding, there were the Federalists, preferring a more powerful central government; and the anti-Federalists, preferring that more power be vested in the states. Either side left to their own devises, without being forced to concede the superior points of their adversaries' worldview, would have resulted in a weaker nation. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." President Obama is a genuinely bright, gifted, and highly intelligent individual, but without strong opposition, his greatness will inevitably be diminished. In fact, the absolute best thing that could possibly happen for the Obama administration would be for the Democrats to lose control of the House and Senate in 2010! President Obama does not require spineless, obsequious acquiescence from Congressional Democrats to be a successful president, and to bring about peace and prosperity; he requires precisely the opposite from Congressional Republicans.
Accomplished what exactly? Building a new "holding facility" to replace Gitmo that is even worse than Gitmo? Handing out $350 Billion to banks with no idea where it went and no accountability? Gearing up for an even larger war in Afghanistan that like Iraq has no end game? Reducing carbon emmisions when he knew it needed to be a 40% reduction and then settled for 4% to make everyone happy? A healthcare "change" that does nothing but make the insurance companies richer? Really hit the wealthiest with an increase in taxes and in reality hit a very few of them and only a 3% increase?
Face it, Obama is no different than any other political animal and is more concerned with future elections and keeping the "moeny" friends happy than he is with you or I.
I appreciate that every Root contributor refers to Paul Krugman as the "Nobel Prize-winning economist" as if that means something significant. After 9/11 he was one of the people advocating the mortgage loan fiasco that has put us where we are today and now we're trusting him to lead the charge to get the economy out of it. I'd appreciate if once, just once, Peter Schiff got some props up in here for calling this spade for what it was years before it happened, while people like Krugman publically laughed in his face.
...eventually!
Republicans are A problem. They aren't THE problem.
Look at who is blocking which bills, its the Democrats.