I just find all this "woe is us" talk -- about how we don't have 60 votes in the Senate, and that being the reason that Obama fails to fight for so much of what he promised -- to be incredibly naive. To wit, today's article by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post:
Indeed, for all the derision from the left about the Bush administration not being "reality-based," many lefty bloggers and talking heads have failed to be reality-based in assessing the Obama administration.So much to respond to.
Health-care reform, in this glass-half-empty world, is a disappointment because it lacks a public option. The president's failure to close Guantanamo or end the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is a betrayal. If only President Obama was willing to bang heads, name names, stand tough, he would have been able to get -- fill in the blank -- a bigger stimulus, tougher financial reform, new legislation to help unions organize.
Excuse me, but can these people not count to 60? Have they somehow failed to notice that Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have not exactly been playing nice? That while the left laments Obama's minor deviations from party orthodoxy, the right has been portraying him, with some success, as an out-of-control socialist?
1. It's the President who said the public option was "the" best way to cut costs and ensure competition. So forgive us if we believed him.
2. The problem with the public option not being in health care reform is less about it "not being there," and more about the President not even trying to get it in there.
3. I'll let Glenn Greenwald tackle Guantanamo.
4. DADT. Seriously, you want to talk about DADT? Okay, let's. When do the discharges stop, Ruth? Under the White Houses's "compromise" being debated in Congress when will the discharges actually stop?
That would be the sound of Ruth Marcus's crickets.
5. The stimulus. Seriously, you want to talk about the stimulus? And then blame its insufficient size on the Republicans? You do realize that the powers that be in the White House didn't even tell the President that we actually needed a bigger stimulus? They just cut Christine Romer's proposal from the memo, dumbing downing down the stimulus right out the gate. We call that negotiating with yourself. It's a common theme in any analysis of the Obama policymaking. And now we have a stimulus bill that wasn't enough, leaving us with unbearably high unemployment, about to lose control of the House. You call that success?
6. And now for my favorite. 60 votes. Yes, but for 60 votes in the Senate, Obama would be king. It's all the fault of the Senate rules.
Funny, then, that George W. Bush had far fewer than 60 votes during his entire term, and he rocked against our Senator minority. In fact, Bush never had more than 55 votes in the Senate, and at times he had as low as 50.
How exactly did he do that, Ruth? Not having 60 votes and all. I thought not having 60 votes was sort of a killer deal. You're exonerated from screwing up, from not fighting back, from not even trying to get your full agenda passed because you just don't have those 60 votes, and without them, you're surely doomed. Then how did George W. Bush do it?
And finally, yes, the right has been portraying President Obama as a socialist. And no, the Republicans aren't playing "nice." I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time Republicans have demonized a Democrat, nor the first time they haven't played "nice." So what's your point? Here's an idea. Maybe, rather than trying to give the Republicans a collective hug, President Obama could start fighting back? The socialist thing stuck because candidate Obama, and then President Obama, didn't want to fight back. Again, that recurring theme.
Yes, I know, being President is hard work. And the Republicans are mean. That's simply not an excuse for not even trying to fight for what you promised.
Someone clearly is naive about politics, but it's not the bloggers.
