Presidential Pillow Talk
In tonight’s confrontation with Congress, Barack Obama will not be sweet-talking Republicans, who are locked into a long-term temper tantrum, but Democrats and independents who embraced him last November and expected to live happily ever after.
Maureen Dowd, as usual, puts it in quasi-sexual terms, complaining that she “always knew he was going to be trouble…He was going to be the kind of guy who whipped you up and then, when you were all excited, left you flat, and then, when you were deflated and exasperated and time was running out, ensorcelled you again with some sparkly fairy dust.”
This kind of couples-therapy talk masks a deeper problem for the President who moved into the White House on a wave of romantic promises about new politics and change, only to find the honeymoon cottage falling apart and that his hopes of working together to fix it were unrealistic.
Comparing Obama’s dilemma with one-party autocracy in China, Thomas Friedman says, “Our one-party democracy is worse. The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying ‘no.’ Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste. Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist. But if he’s forced to depend entirely on his own party to pass legislation, he will be whipsawed by its different factions.”
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7 Responses to “Presidential Pillow Talk”
I think a comment left at Ann Althouse put it best – “Obama and his upcoming health care speech (can be compared) to a salesman that you've shut the door on, who rings the bell again for another try.”
The reality, of course, is that Obama indeed is engaging in damage control, for his own as well as his party's increasingly self-wrecked reputation.
Dowd? [snicker] The most vapid liberal “writer” alive — and her dimwit book's cover shows what may be one of her overly inflated delusions about what she thinks of herself…
http://www.amazon.com/Are-Men-Necessary-Sexes-C…
“rings the bell again for another try”
That's because the intelligent public has been saying, ever more strongly: NO SALE.
I don't always agree with Thomas Friedman, but I do this time. Only one party seems to be trying to do any work, while the other is dead weight. As for Dowd, the book cover reminds me of the covers on the old Raymond Chandler novels… and I always enjoy learning a new word, in this case, “ensorcelled”, which in today's political environment is best applied to the Beck/Limbaugh sycophant/drones, but since none of them actually read it hardly matters.
“With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying ‘no.’”
No exception here.
“a salesman that you've shut the door on”
The Dems don't have Billy Mays available, either.
* * *
“in this case, 'ensorcelled'”
The Obama cult is waning, and the militant fringe is going to be upset if he wavers on the public option.
(Checkmate.)
Maybe so, AR — but we're all going to listen nonetheless, eh? (Time to go turn on the television, in fact…)