Thanks for the comments from others who have pointed out that I didn't write a piece comparing Obama to Lincoln. I still find anonymous' comment way off target and bearing no logical relationship to my actual post.
My focus was on the mythologizing that time tends to bring to our remembrances of the past. The Obama and Lincoln comparison, as well as the FDR and Obama comparisons have been unfavorably made for some time. Primarily the comparisons are used to depict Obama as weak and ineffective when compared to Lincoln and FDR. My analysis of Lincoln was to contrast the factual reality with the mythology that we've built around Lincoln. The abolitionists criticized Lincoln as weak and ineffective. They questioned his commitment to ending slavery. Lincoln's primary goal was not to end slavery it was to do whatever was necessary to preserve the Union. He compromised a great deal as did Roosevelt. I'll save that stroll down history lane for another day. Interestingly, the group sold out the most significantly by FDR was African-Americans. (African-Americans and the New Deal)
Compromise is the cornerstone of legislation. No one ever gets all that he or she wants in a bill. Republican and Democrat doesn't really mean a great deal behind closed doors when bills are in their infancy; everyone compromises to give birth to a bill and curries favor so that when their side is presenting a bill they can call in those favors. The horror of this new crowd of inexperienced legislators is that they don't understand how the system works and they draw lines in the sand. All that they create are impasses.
Obama's efforts at transparency have resulted in more public disclosure of the process and everyone believes that this is a significant change when this game is as old as politics itself. Those same politicians in Congress who make great speeches condemning the opposition's position on an issue, go out afterwards and share a bottle of scotch. A great many politicians are lawyers. One of the first things that you learn as a litigator is that nothing in the courtroom is personal. To zealously represent your client, you're perfectly willing to suggest that opposing counsel is hiding some dirty secret, dishonest, and robs babies and the elderly for sport. During recess, it's possible that you will have lunch with the opposing counsel. Ex parte communications apply to lawyer/judge exchanges outside the presence of the other counsel but there are no rules that prohibit opposing counsel from sharing a drink or a meal. My point is that the moment the adversarial stuff is over, most everyone reverts to being just folks. Democrats and Republicans for the most part keep government functioning through the art of compromise.
The Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010 are for the most part a very inexperienced lot. Some of them have never held any public office until they landed in the U.S. Congress. They are a different breed as demonstrated in the recent debt ceiling crisis. From 1981 to 2010, presidents from Reagan to Obama had no difficulties getting Congress to pass legislation increasing the debt ceiling regardless of the party in power in Congress. It was rational and logical that the President, nor most of Congress would anticipate the ridiculous holding hostage of the debt ceiling that took place in 2011.
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| The graph indicates which president and which political party controlled Congress each year. |
It makes a lot of difference. If you state that the President should have held out for a public option in the health care bill, that's criticism. If you assert that the reason that he didn't push for a public option was because he was in cahoots with big pharma and offer as evidence of the conspiracy that there were meetings at the White House with big pharma, that provides fodder for those who are desperately looking for grounds to impeach the president. It's also naive. Of course pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and physician's groups were interested in exactly what affordable health care would mean to their business interests. They were provided opportunities for input. This is not a new thing.
The critique of the President's actions is legitimate criticism. I don't support that point of view but it's certainly anyone's right to object to the actions of any elected official. However, the attribution of motives to the President involving a conspiracy with big pharma is character assassination. You can't then turn around as election day approaches and state with any credibility that you were just holding the president accountable but now plan to campaign to encourage people to vote to re-elect him. What kind of fool would vote for a dishonest scalawag who has betrayed the public intentionally?
All of these dramatic positions attacking the President's character from some progressives will affect his ability to run a successful re-election campaign. Protestations that Obama is a good guy and I'm just critiquing his flaws is bull. Recovering from criticism is a standard part of being a public official; recovering from character assassination seldom happens. Remember John Kerry?
Sheria,
ReplyDeleteYou certainly have the dino vote of confidence.
I have much the same problem with the conspiracy talkers -- some people enjoy spinning such twaddle and feeling mighty clever about it, but in the end it's destructive. It is easy to fume about Obama's alleged capitulations, the intellectual effort required being about the same, I suggest, as patting oneself on the back for spouting nonsense based on false equivalence and sham absolute objectivity and then declaring everyone else "naive," "partisan," "childish," etc.
Before they talk trash, critics might try a little experiment: would you say that stuff to the man's face? Would you go up to Obama (or Bush 43, for that matter) and say something like, "You treacherous, lying, contemptible coward, you and the evil corporate hacks who pull your strings have betrayed the American People!" Really? Wouldn't you feel like a thorough heel if you did? If you wouldn't and you think you're looking at no less than Satan's right-hand man, then alright, I guess you might as well go ahead and throw the full book of Shakespearean insults at him. Otherwise, show some compassion for the object of your criticism. It doesn't imply agreement or adulation, just good manners and regard for human frailty.
Anyhow, I've heard a number of D.C. talkers in recent years point out that things have changed big-time in the last few decades -- even before the 'baggers swept into town with their ignorance and their nutty, rigid notions about things, it seems as if the two parties' reps were hardly on speaking terms anymore, even outside the legislative arena. "Hate" or at least "contempt" would hardly be terms too strong terms to describe how they feel about one another, or so I've heard. If so, that augurs ill for the republic's future -- it's hard to see how the relatively healthy sort of compromise you describe is going to happen amongst people who can scarcely stand the sight of one another.
It looks to me as if national legislators have entered a perilous phase now of trying to "weaponize" everything -- every procedure, every little point of order in Roberts' Rules, every tradition -- to gain advantage over the other side. That doesn't lead to sound law; it could eventually lead to civil war and fully autocratic rule. Isn't that kind of escalation what everyone worried about during the Cold War? "O, hell naw -- they wouldn't go and do THAT just because we did THIS! Would they??? WHAT?? They would??? Too late: Ka-Boooooooooom!" Do we really want to run the country on the principle of mutually assured destruction? Yet if one side (the GOP, obviously) is so insistent on adopting the principle, it's hard to see how the other side resists the urge to respond in kind.
"It makes a lot of difference. If you state that the President should have held out for a public option in the health care bill, that's criticism. If you assert that the reason that he didn't push for a public option was because he was in cahoots with big pharma and offer as evidence of the conspiracy that there were meetings at the White House with big pharma, that provides fodder for those who are desperately looking for grounds to impeach the president. It's also naive. Of course pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and physician's groups were interested in exactly what affordable health care would mean to their business interests. They were provided opportunities for input. This is not a new thing."
ReplyDeleteI say the plan (whatever it is) is a failure of strategy and details.
Just the other day in MN he said himself the plan won't work without the mandate, and the mandate has been shot down by a court. Then he said, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. In other words he has no clue what he is going to do.
He failed because of a mistake on his part. Can't one say that without being accused of endangering his reelection? I guess not, and that's irrational.
Sheria, we don't know who the "anonymous" commenter was who came to your post nor the commenter who went by the nym "K.I.S.S." at my blog where I cross-posted your article.
ReplyDeleteBoth of them resemble each other in the disdain and unconcealed contempt in which they regard Mr. Obama.
Anonymous here did not come back to defend her/himself. K.I.S.S. at least rebutted my counter points, albeit, weakly, IMHO.
Both refuse to see what is happening with Obama and his unreasonable critics in the context of history--which you so deftly illustrated.
It is difficult for me to believe that any liberal would consciously make things easier for another Republican presidency and, possibly, Congress.
But just now that seems to be the reality.
If Obama cannot beat Bachmann, Palin, or some other idiot; don't blame that loss on his critics, but his performance, results, or the fact that the country is not majority left.
ReplyDeleteSheria,
ReplyDeleteTea Party Republicans are undoubtedly the novices of the legislature, as you describe; but I believe you are being overly generous. What I observe is more than a simple lack of protocol – of not understanding the fine art of compromise. In their view, sharing a drink with an adversary is akin to consorting with the enemy, i.e. of being an “establishment” politician, of business as usual. They have positioned themselves as insurgents. At least their words and deeds are consistent: No compromise, hold the country hostage, caused panic in world financial markets, and poison the well of public discourse. Many TPers are bigots, racists, fascists, and sociopaths – BRF&S. This is not a party of good ole boys huddled in back rooms.
The liberals and progressives of the Democratic Party are certainly not BRF&S, but they can be as craven and knuckleheaded as any. They are guilty of Bush-era all-or-nothing thinking, which states: “You are either with us or with the Tea Baggers.” What liberal critics of Obama seem to underestimate is the virulence of TP insurgents. If liberals and progressives do not unite behind Obama, the results will be catastrophic and long-lasting … a suffocatingly oppressive country not worth living in.
Reality,
ReplyDeleteOnly the individual mandate of the HCR act has been struck down by a court. But this is not the final word. If you read the fine print of the decision, the mandate provision is severable meaning all other provisions of the HRC act remain intact. For instance, the all-important Patient's Bill of Rights provisions are still law ... protecting you from being refused coverage due to a pre-existing condition, among other benefits.
The case will eventually be decided by the SCOTUS. Thus your pronouncements are a bit premature. Legal scholars believe the SCOTUS will uphold the healthcare bill without modification.
P.S.
ReplyDeleteObama himself has stated on several occasions that the HRC bill is not perfect: "The good should not be held captive by the perfect" (a rough paraphrase of his words). Furthermore, Obama has stated several times that future generations will change and amend the bill just as Medicare was amended and improved by successive administrations, Democrat and Republican alike.
All in all, the HRC bill represents a major legislative achievement, and the first of its kind ... just as Medicare and Social Security represented major milestones in American history.
Octo,
ReplyDeleteYes, I think it's the high stakes of upcoming election cycles that we need to consider. We are at a very dangerous historical point, and things could get very bad very fast -- fast enough to make everybody's head spin.
Sometimes President Obama's inexperience has not served him well -- there's no hesitation here in saying so. And perhaps a Romney presidency with a Democratic House and Senate wouldn't be the end of the western world, but it's not a pretty thing to contemplate, say, a Perry or Bachmann presidency, or even a Romney presidency, with a fully Republican House and Senate to pull or keep the top of the ticket ever farther to the right. This is a time of economic crisis, and that makes for crisis politics, crisis-related opportunities. Does any rational person want Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann in charge of making those changes? How about privatizing Social Security and Medicare, for starters? How about defunding public education insofar as possible because all those persnickety atheist union-belonging socialist homos are perverting our children? How about gutting the EPA some more, since that was so much fun last time around? How about further increasing military spending even beyond the high levels at which we already find it? I'm guessing that's where we would be headed: any "gubmint" that helps the little guy will be eliminated, which the gubmint that helps the big guy, will see its tribe increase. And once the damage is done, it could take a generation or more to get anything like the old programs back.
Tom,
I think it's fair to say that any president who loses a re-election bid did something to deserve it. No doubt -- at the very least, that president will have failed to make an accurate assessment of the possibilities around him; in other words, he won the first time, then conditions changed and he couldn't figure out how to stay ahead of voter discontent and alleviate real suffering.
The blame may be somewhat mitigated by the sheer difficulty of those conditions, to a degree which only careful analysis could properly determine.
You could say that Jimmy Carter lost in 1980, for example, partly because he never got the hang of dealing with a congress he should have been better able to work with and because he alienated the truly liberal wing of his party; the other part consisted in some pretty serious nation-wide and international problems over which nobody might have been able to exert complete control.
Bush 41 lost mainly because he was perceived as almost indifferent to the human suffering entailed by a serious economic downturn and just trying to ride it out, and in part because people may have been retroactively expressing how sick of "Reaganism" they had become. And so on.
This Democrat is coming down firmly on the side of the President now and I'll use my energies to see us pull together behind him. I've seen what happens to our ability to function as a government when we allow ourselves to be pulled apart within the party.
ReplyDeleteMy sympathies naturally lie with progressives, but my understanding of government, which has benefited so much from Sheria's tutelage, means I back the man whose agenda is to keep that government functional.
If Obama loses (which I doubt very much) we would have to look at why people who voted for him the first time, did not the second time.
ReplyDeleteI will count out racism. Why would they be willing to vote for a black President once, but not twice?
Criticism of the President is healthy to a point; and the left should not be calling those critics not loyal, unpatriotic, or stupid.
The point of discussing mistakes, is to learn from them.
Dino,
ReplyDeleteI could give a thousand and one reasons for wanting the TeaHoos defeated next year, but one aspect about their character, the lack thereof, bothers me the most. They are devious and deceptive.
Case in point: In November 2010, the TPers campaigned on jobs and the economy. In states where they won (in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Maine and Virginia, among others), jobs and the economy were not even on their legislative agenda. Instead, they focused on union busting, anti-abortion bills, voter suppression bills, anti-EPA bills, corporate tax breaks, the defunding of Planned Parenthood and PBS: Anything but jobs and the economy. Theirs is a hidden agenda, and that makes them untrustworthy above all other considerations.
Shaw,
I took a look at the K.I.S.S. comment (the screen moniker rings a bell). Not your garden-variety troll, in my opinion. What I suspect is a boiler room psy-operative who visits liberal blogs with pesky, time-consuming comments; and I suspect “Reality” (above) is one of them. What aroused my suspicions is this article at HuffPo. Notice the comment section and the gratuitous Obama-bashing from suspicious sources. This is no mere coincidence. I believe right-wing boiler rooms are taking advantage of every opportunity to run down the president when his approval ratings are at an all-time low.
There is an old saying where I come from: “Keep your friends close and your anemones closer.” However, the anemones annoy the heck out of Bloggingdino and raise our Captain’s blood pressure. So I try to keep them away as much as possible.
Sheria: “Remember John Kerry?”
Heck! Remember Al Gore. Had Ralph Nader stayed away from Election Year 2000, we would not have had eight years of George Dubya Bush … and total disaster.