WaPo’s Dan Balz on President Obama’s “resilience” after last month’s shellacking:
What seems clear is that Obama has begun to position himself back on more comfortable ground in the wake of the self-described shellacking Democrats took in the midterm elections. By instinct and demeanor, he is a politician who prefers finding common ground with his opponents. At a moment of political weakness, the tax package provided him the vehicle to quickly reassert that part of his political personality at a time when he needed the public to take a fresh look at him. [Emphasis way added.]
They’ve said this about Obama for years, that he’s some sort of Great Compromiser, who would bridge the gaps between Left and Right, between Black and White, and all the other chasms of American political and social life — like… I dunno, like some miraculous kind of spackling paste.
The same Obama whose (admittedly thin) Senate voting record was to the left of Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders. The same Obama who called his GOP opponents “enemies” in the run up to the above-mentioned “shellacking.” They’ve said this about the Obama who’s first attempt at compromise as President was just a flat reminder that “I won.” The same Obama who pushed through life and death legislation on a strict party line vote, and abusing the bipartisan Byrd Rule to do it? The same Obama who, when faced for the first time by real opposition, put on the most petty and petulant press conference performance in presidential history. The same Obama who, just days later, walked out on another briefing, blaming his wife.
I could go on, but why? The “instinct” part is demonstrably false, and the evidence for Obama’s “demeanor” isn’t much stronger. The question is, where did this meme come from and why does the press keep insisting that it’s true?
The Democratic Party is divided into “situational” liberals, who are willing to park their ideology if that’s what it takes to get re-elected (basically the Bill Clinton wing of the party) and the True Believer liberals, who after a shellacking like they took on Nov. 2, still want to double-down on their beliefs.
That group is afraid Barack Obama is sliding over to the other side, and are truly ticked off about his heresy, while the majority of the big media is in the “situational” camp — they may not be happy seeing Obama compromise with the Republicans, but they hate the thought of the Republicans winning in 2012 even more. So in the wake of the tax cut extension, they’re perfectly willing to try and polish up the president’s credentials, in hopes that will bring the moderate swing voters back to their side, while the far left of the party comes to its senses between now and 2012.
The problem for the president and his media backers is the deal expires right after the ’12 election, so unless Obama has the huevos to run a general election campaign on the promise that taxes will be raised in 2013, he, the far left and the big media are going to go through this Kabuki dance again sometime around Labor Day two years from now (assuming the House GOP is smart enough to make a permanent extension of the cuts part of Congress’ fall agenda two years from now).
John: “(assuming the House GOP is smart enough to make a permanent extension of the cuts part of Congress’ fall agenda two years from now)”
Just so, John, but why wait two years?. Pass in the House in January a bill to make the current tax rates permanent. Let’s see if it can then pass in the Senate. Even if it doesn’t pass, it will at least help separate out the Rinos from the conservatives there. If it does pass, let it be the first in a ever growing list of vetoes that will result in Obama showing the MSM how the Great Compromiser can become in History ‘The Great Vetoer’.
Agreed. Given the number of Senate Blue Dogs battling for re-election over the next two years, it would interesting to see Harry Reid try to tell someone like Jim Webb how to vote.
Here’s why I’d wait — you pass the bad bills at the start of a two-year term, the ones you really don’t want the public to remember when they go to the voting booth in the next election. You save the good bills for the months right before the election, so those are the ones on the public’s mind when they start marking their ballots.
Doing a bill to make the tax cuts permanent early in the 2011-12 congressional term would be smart only if you think doing the bill in the summer or fall of ’12 would hurt you more than it will help you. If you think it’s going to help you, why take it off the table for the general election when you can make Obama and all the other Democrats sweat about either campaigning against extending the tax cuts and angering moderates, or campaigning for extending them and angering your far left base.
(The danger in doing it late would be if Obama could make himself over into as slick a pol as Clinton was with welfare reform, and convince swing voters he was in on this “permanent tax cut” thing the whole time, and then sign it right before the 2012 election. But Obama was getting physically ill over doing the tax cut compromise last week — it’s going to take a ton of personality modification to make him be able to swallow having his agenda trashed and keep a smile on his face just to win re-election, the way Clinton did in 1996. The media can claim he’s the great compromiser, but his face and body language tell the voters something else entirely; he only likes compromises when the other side is doing the compromising.)
Thanks, John. But: “you pass the bad bills at the start of a two-year term, the ones you really don’t want the public to remember when they go to the voting booth in the next election.”
First, the MSM will attempt to make all Repub bills seem like bad bills. Second, what seemingly bad bills do you anticipate the Repubs will want to pass? I don’t know of any such at this time.
I’m talking more about ‘bad’ in general — mainly in terms of the Democrats’ dragging out ObamaCare this year and being surprised that people remembered in the fall why they didn’t like the bill in the spring. But substitute ‘controversial’ for ‘bad’ and you’d have something like Social Security reform legislation that, should the GOP win back the White House and Senate while holding the House in 2012, would best be put forward early in 2013, because it’s an easy issue for Democrats and the media to demagogue and scare voters in the run-up to a general election.
Tax cuts? I can think of times when the Dems and the media have tried to demagogue those. But I can’t remember a time when they’ve ever succeeded in getting a majority of the public to buy into their demagoguery and actually think tax cuts are a bad idea. Which is why you don’t play your hand on making the Bush tax cuts permanent early in the 2011-12 congressional session. Tuck it away until the 2012 campaign and dare Obama and congressional Democrats to run on the idea of not extending the tax cuts (and remember, the Republicans don’t control the Senate, so it’s not as though bringing it up this Spring is automatically going to get Harry Reid to get all tingly about passing it, with no election on the immediate horizon).
Scuttling ObamaCare should be the House’s main task this spring, while extending the tax cuts right when Obama and the other Dems are seeking re-election should be the neutron bomb Boehner pulls out 18 or so months from now.
The President’s campaign of making himself a compromiser and a builder of bridges between ideological extremes have failed by his actions of the last two years. If he thinks that he can turn a retreat into a victory in the extension of the Bush tax cuts he is mistaken.
His attempt to do the same with private enterprise that after demonizing them for two years he can change everything with a 45 minutes meeting with “carefully selected” 20 CEO’s is failing because alert Bloggers have exposed the set-up in pieces like “How Fake Was the 20 CEO’s-Obama Business Meeting?” where they answer with – “Not fake at all; In fact it was paved by the true color of green. We will tell you in the only way that one can measure the truth – measuring the flow of Money:” Read the names on the “Green” at http://www.robbingamerica.com
But nowhere — not in his memoirs, not in his unaccomplished-yet-meteoric rise to power, and certainly not in his governing style — is there any evidence for Obama’s supposed preference for finding “common ground with his opponents?
Good for you Mr. Green. A very good column with an unassailable finish.
It seems to me when our representatives talk of and consider enacting legislation arrived through compromise, the baseline from which they begin discussions is that the status quo is close to the position of being Constitutional, and any compromise moves us away from that position. Until recently it seems the courts have been doing this too; moving us away from a position of Constitutional government towards a position of unconstitutional government through the use of judicial fiat or precedent. The movement ALWAYS seems to be towards unconstitutionality. Why in the world is there a call for compromise when each occurrence moves towards an unconstitutional Government? BC, if a scorched earth policy towards leftists ensures we’ll be true to the rule of law and Constitutionality, I’m all in favor of that. It’s the rule of law that protects your right to post idiocy, so it seems you would want to protect that.
As opposed to what? Republican bipartisanship?
You’ve missed the point of this column, which was a critique of how the MSM portrays the President.
Do please try to keep up.
Please forgive BC, Stephen.
He’s using yesterday’s Official Organizing For America Talking Points, and hasn’t gotten the new ones yet.
He’s also not intelligent enough to be able to think for himself, which is why he just parrots talking points.
Won’t see him here again. Trolls avoid blogs like this and Roger Simon’s, where they only fear slipping past a moderator.
BC is like a cockroach… he crawls just about everywhere and can’t be easily chased off. The guy must not have a job, family, or friends, as much as he’s around this place.
I tend not to miss the point of anything. Republicans have been bitter, childish obstructionists to everything Obama had tried to do. If they were your neighbors, you would leave the neighborhood. Their eye-rolling success in last month’s election only seemed to confirm the fears of outsiders that a good chunk of our population is completely nuts.
I personally think that Obama has been playing too nice with bad people who don’t want to play nice at all, but I’m not a politician so I don’t feel any diplomatic restraint from calling a malicious moron a malicious moron. In any case, Obama has been trying to play nice in any case, so he deserves that credit at least.
The problem I see with people like you is that any one who does not agree with you is a moron. Sorry given the number of doctors, (PhD and MD), engineers and scientists who are in the tea party or support it that really doesn’t hold water. We actually think and have a record of accomplishments unlike our President. My opinion: the Republicans have been a bit too nice towards him.
Defend this behavior, then.
Sorry, BC. We’re not in the market for red herrings here today.
Good point. Besides, Senator Collins is a RINO Obama can count on.
Talk about doubling down on stupid.
The articles premise completely blows by you. You try to force the thread to point to some illusionary comic book take on the world. The author points out that you missed his point entirely.You counter with the self-serving claim that you never miss points – you’re just such a wicked smarty – and in the same comment delve deeper into your off point comic book tae on..something or other.
You invariably come off as a complete dunderhead when you comment here. Just who the he!! tells you you’re so smart? Your mother? Whoever it is does you a grave disservice.
The people who use the same talking points as him, of course. Which, naturally, indicates a lot about their intelligence, as well.
Dunderheads of a feather, I guess.
i agree with you, Obama has been to nice to bad people but they aren’t Americans. does that make Obama a malicious moron?
No more a moron than someone purporting to be from Cincinnati who can’ t even spell it correctly.
Republicans have been bitter, childish obstructionists to everything Obama had tried to do.
Tell us, dum-dum, how did Republicans “obstruct” when there were 60 democratic Senators?
I do love this- A president with an unstoppable majority in both houses of congress, and the republicans have been evil obstructionists. On any party line vote, the president could have gotten his way (as could have Pelosi and Reid). Simple and easy.
Any of their ‘caring’ issues could have been done already. Dadt? done in January of ’09. The dream act? Done in late January of ’09. Anything else in the last two years? Done whenever they wanted. We have a President who talks a decent talk (sort of, provided he has notes) of acting on pincipal and not on politics, but never does the former (what happened to all that ‘I’d rather be a one-term President than be popular’ stuff?).
Not that I’d care to see any more of their policies put into effect, but seriously- super majority in both houses, and they turned into complete wusses, and are only now throwing political bones to their bases. So much for principals. Shame on them.
Especially your own sword, which doesn’t have one to miss.
Go disembowel yourself elsewhere.
Recycled moonbat rantings from the Bush era. You want some fresh rantings?
We won. You lost. San Fran Nan is being downsized to Dear Minority Leader. Dingy Harry has a nominal majority that he can’t control, because it realizes that he’s trying to take it on the political equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Barry Dunham has been shown up as the Diversity Hire of the United States, and his puppeteers are scrambling to retain control over the Chicago machine.
You Red Fascists are out of power for at least half a generation. Your Cloward-Piven strategy failed because Americans proved not to be servile sheep like Petulant Lefties are.
You’re going to Hell. And the Hell that you’re going to is to spend the rest of your life watching people, through tears of frustrated and impotent rage, going about their business without your permission.
Note the expression of emotional content without any actual objective comments. The typical projection liberal. Anyone who disagrees with them must be “childish”.
What is truly sad is that BC will probably take all of this as evidence of how intelligent he is.
It doesn’t matter how obstructionist the Republicans have been for the last two years, there were not enough of them in Congress to obstruct anything. If Obama had problems getting his agenda passed, then it was his own party that stopped him.
Note, please, BC can’t even find a real incident or news story that illustrates his point, so he has to use a cartoon!
What’s next, BC, gonna be referencing Garfield as a credible primary source?
Wasn’t it Himler, the Nazi proaganda minister, who postulated that if you tell a big lie enough times that people will believe it? The fact is that Obama was marketed in 2008 the way Madison Avenue markets a detergent: bigger, better, new & improved, etc. and the American people fell for it. The MSM is now in the process of doing a sequel. Hopefully at least 51% of the electorate will figure out they were had by 2012.
It was Goebbels, actually.
Stephen, you need the leftist decoder ring. It comes in your lunchbox with Unhappy Meals, and allows you to swallow foods you don’t like, along with policies you don’t like, while reading articles that would otherwise make no sense.
What Balz is saying (nice to see that Obama has some in hand, albeit, Carville might not count this writer as being what he had in mind), is that Obama is willing to compromise with those to the left of him.
You see, to YOUR eyes (and Stanley Kurtz’s impeccable and totally ignored flawless research), it would be extremely difficult to GET to the left of Obama. Ahhhh, but Stephen…you overlook the Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore lunatic fringe. They scream and yell and say he’s a “sellout”. So..he COMPROMISES and says to “give him time” to tear down the system.
See, between Bill Ayers and Garafolo…and Dick Durbin and Harry Reid…there is a sliver of space in which to fit…the Compromised Obama. Compromising positions. It’s the leftist way.
Obviously the MSM is preserving the “Great Compromiser” meme so that he can be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize …shoot, he’s already played that card. Hmmm; I know! the real reason for the “Great Compromiser” meme is to set Obama up for an Oscar. There are a dozen movies that he might make in the imaginary future. I bet every one will be worth an Oscar – so why not give him one, or better yet, two Oscars now?
With an Oscar duct taped to right and left teleprompters, everyone will love Obama again.
Charles Krauthammer was absolutely correct.
There was no reason to pass the “tax cut” bill now. It could easily and without “compromise” been passed very soon after Jan. 1 —
and the MSM would have had much less to use to disinform.
If our Republican legislators would only hold to the “no compromise” conservative stand that they were elected for during the next two years …
They must be kept under pressure to not keep caving in — especially when there is no reason to — or we are lost — truly lost.
What I meant to add was that — clearly,
it was our Republicans who “compromised” … they had the power and they blew it.
Obama didn’t “compromise,” he had no choice but to play his hand the way he did — knowing full well how the MSM would treat it.
He hasn’t really lost the left — who else can they promote who is more left than he? All they can do is stay home next election — which they won’t.
It’s the middle he’s gaining …
It must be turned around.
they just make shit up
Mr. Apologizer in chief will soon be known as Barak “veto” Obama with the new Congress.
We will see then how much he has “moved to the center” and how much he likes to be the “great compromiser”.
Most Americans finally realize that government spending must be curtailed. This should give the Republicans a decisive advantage. Democrats are existentially committed to bigger government.
It has been great watching the pinkos on MSNBC over the past several weeks. They have actually been critical of the Kenyan for either his negotiating skills or what he had negotiated. There were a couple of times when I was sure that Olbey was about to say, “…yeah, but why should we have expected something else, he’s never done anything that would have trained him for this…” Alas, he didn’t speak those words.
Any man who in meeting with his opposition party simply states “I won.”, is no compromiser. At best he is a Chaveznista, worse he could be something quite intolerable.
Bravo Stephen Green. You got 12 responses so far and not a single ‘Racist’ epithet.
The times they truly must be a changin.
“I dunno, like some miraculous kind of spackling paste”
Thanks. I have to clean my monitor now. But, you know, that’s the best description I’ve heard of his schtick since he was elected.
@David Thomson – unfortunately, most Republicans are also existentially committed to bigger government. Hopefully, however, the new TP Republicans, plus some heavy clue bats falling on the heads of the more ‘beltway’ oriented types, will change that commitment.
I have no problem with the Far-left and their uncompromising stance. I’m on the “Far-Right”. I do not believe in compromising with the Left. (I will compromise with Libertarians, as that moves us further right, in my book.)
I think they should demand no compromising. I want them to display their philosophy in all its inglory and surreality. I will happily stack my Far-Right values and positions up against theirs, and may the best man win the hearts and minds of America. I KNOW who’ll win that battle!
The center wins Presidential elections. Both extremes don’t care for the center, so they always feel that they are losing, and they probably always will. Both extremes feel passion and the accompanying feeling of virtue, which, I suppose, is its own reward, but winning is NOT one of the rewards. The best they can do is move the center a little their way.
Can you think of an example where the center did not win a Presidential election?
D-White, is the Ping Pong Tongue in the sand along with the entire thorax? The Picket Fence you sit on is down the center of one thing. Take a guess. Or are you riding side saddle today, facing Left?
Ride the Picket Fence with purpose D-White. Love will come with moral equivalency.
His mother sent newspaper clippings to him,
About his old friends who’d stopped being boys.
This is pure “leg tingle journalism.”
A recent psychological study showed that most girls when they develop a crush on a boy begin to cast everything he does in the most positive light possible, even actions objective observers would agree reflect poorly.
When journalists are feeling the leg tingle every decision Obama makes is correct. If he compromises that’s smart triangulation; if he holds his ground or makes radical proposals for outrageous levels of new government spending, that’s being bold. If he walks out of a presser leaving Clinton in charge that just shows how confident he is.
Heads Obama wins, tails … Obama still wins. It’s all about the tingle. Of course now that the public is paying attention they can see just how junior high the mainstream media is these days. Evan Thomas’ 15 points lie on the ash-heap of Internet disintermediation history.
Propaganda.
x2
A fool and his money are soon parted (times 2 in this case since both of you will be paying higher taxes if Obama and Democrats win in ’12).
There are very good reasons to extend the tax cuts now and not wait for the next congress. One reason that comes to mind is that the IRS has to send out forms and instructions for 2011 taxes pretty much this week – otherwise the withholdings for everyone become an unholy mess and the red tape itself sucks hundred of millions out of the economy on it’s own.
Another reason is that self employed people, and others who pay taxes quarterly have to put away enough money to account for the tax payments. This would begin in Jan.
Finally, without the tax extensions would take alot of income and profits in December to ensure they are taxed at the lower rate. That money might not get reinvested in the market.
I don’t care what the Muslim from Kenya does from here on out. Most of us have his number loud and clear. We know what he is and what he stands for 100% without any doubts. His back is against the wall and he is trying to save what he loves and cherishes the most — himself. The MSM attempts to glorify his intellect, his diplomacy and his new label as the great compromiser and negotiator is just propaganda. A crock . They have conspired to make this week in his miserable life as being pivotal. We are all supposed to view him in a positive light and vote for him in 2012. Forget what you know. Obama is a new man. I don’t think so
The Muslim from Kenya?? Mr Lucky, add this to your list.
“By instinct and demeanor, he is a politician who prefers finding common ground with his opponents.”
What opponents? Obama “won” almost every election before running for President by getting the courts to uncover dirt on his opponent, or having his toadies challenge thousands of signatures (See, in Chicago, if you can force you opponent not to cheat, you have him by the throat).
Then in the 2008 election, he basically got carried over the finish line by the MSM as they viciously smeared his opponents, allowing him to keep his hands clean.
Yeah he’s a compromiser all right – a man of severely compromised principles.
That right there is my nominee for the statement of the day.
Uncommon ground is where the President has found himself as reality has intruded itself into the career of the most high profile PC man in America.
One gets the sense that when Obama entered office that he was given and eyeful and earful when it came to the secure briefing he received on global foreign policy, particularly militarily.
Since then he has backed off Guantanamo and ending the war in Afghanistan and let Iraq pretty much alone.
Obama has kept his promise about lobbyist’s by simply talking to them outside the White House in a clear attempt to deceive people and has not kept his promise about a transparent gov’t.
As accurate as what you say is, that is not what most people here want to hear. Been there, done that, many times.
The bullshit buck stops here.
I grew up molested as a child by babysistters and later raped by a person trusted as a young adult.
I’m effin’ tired of our country running down the drain and Im effin’ tired of being angry at people who never did jack squat to me and I’m REALLY tired of men who know jack about ME being presumptuous pricks and aiming their ire at me because I happen to own a vagina+ovaries.
Truce? I love you guys…
I’m sorry to hear that, Angel. You have my sympathies. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Thank you and same sentiments back atchya, Marc.
I’m just tired of the “Evil Women” meme too.
The fastest way to tear our country asunder is to rip us apart from the inside via “The battle of the sexes”.
We have bigger fish to fry. Hating on the stupidity of some women is pointless.
Or maybe they’re just pathological liars.
The expression cognitive dissonance, the ability to hold conflicting ideas at the same time, is what I would use to describe Democrats vis a vis Obama. They expect Obama to be the Great Compromiser, the Great Articulator, the Great Leader even though the Obama experience is the Great Divider, the Great Prevaricator, and the Great Failure.
How do Democrats reconcile this dissonance, well they get very uncomfortable and yell a lot.
WHOA : careful.
Why continue in speculation of motives for the PUBLIC statements and behaviours of politicians laughingly/ scornfully call themselves “democrats”, with their cringing followers the RINOS. Who have given proofs again and again that they are at WAR with America and Americans. And for them that old rule applies : ALL’s FAIR in … WAR.
It’s one of the reasons the discourse has gone their way for the past half century. The polite, reasonable, CIVIL,commentators weighing pros and cons, treating those WHO HAVE CLEARLY shown themselves predators, gangsters, as “well-meaning”, civil partners.
THERE IS ONLY ONE PRO for them,to get what they want by whatever means. The civility, the unwillingnesss to engage in BATTLE, to get down and dirty, of those who see what they’re doing is for them a powerful weapon, as in abused wife who “forgives” him.
The very people they are abusing and attacking, accepting their statements, worrying about the meaning. Who was it (Lenin?) that knew how to sell the “rope that would hang them “– their object for take-over.
THE MEANING IS CLEAR, and has been for at least the past half century, take the Americans for a ride from which they’ll never return. And “respect” from those sucker Americans is the way they’ll do it.
TRUST NOTHING they do or say except as stratagem to their ultimate goal, takeover of the USA in the service of their NEW WORLD ORDER,long in the design and engineering.
The TP Republicans hold the balance of power in government at present. You’ve heard the ‘ol saying “the President proposes and Congress disposes”? There is no plausible coalition in the House to pass legislation (other than noncontroversial Mother’s Day resolutions!) That does not include conservative members. Will they have the courage of their convictions? I doubt it but “hope springs eternal”.
If the House keeps passing common sense legislation and it gets by the Senate and Obama keeps vetoing who then will the obstructionst be?
Obama did not “compromise”. What he did do was recognize that he was in checkmate and then surrendered. It remains to be seen whether or not he wil learn the art of compromise in order to avoid checkmate in the future.
The most realistic (cynical?) response to ANYTHING this man and his supporters and Csars do OR say is suspicion.
He has a public history of contempt for the people who listen to him and his. Everything he has done in achieving and in managing political power evidences that he is untrustworty, EVEN for a politician. Except one with destructive motivations. That any who accept his announcements are suckers to be taken without remorse. History, personal and public does say something about what to expect.
Don’t forget his history which is on the back burner never to be looked at again, even with the sneering disdain original to the subject: the Executive Order, the UNPRECEDENTED SEALING from public examination and review, his qualifications for the job he now holds.
WE STILL KNOW NOTHING BUT GOSSIP, NOTHING DOCUMENTED / REAL ABOUT THESE, and parts of his past except what he and his supporters reveal.