Our second political Quote of the Day comes from Andrew Sullivan (a TMV favorite) who has a different take on the bro-ha-ha over President Barack Obama’s compromise over tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans in exchange for Republicans Senators dropping their opposition to extending unemployments to Americans (who unlike them don’t have government health insurance, expense accounts and eat bean soup in the upscale Senate dining room):
The GOP has won again on tactics, but keeps losing on strategy. More broadly, as this sinks in, Obama’s ownership of this deal will help restore the sense that he is in command of events, and has shifted to the center (even though he is steadily advancing center-left goals). It’s already being touted as “triangulation” by some on the right even as it contains major liberal faves – unemployment insurance for another 13 months, EITC expansion, college tax credits, and a pay-roll tax cut.
My view is that if this deal is a harbinger for the negotiation Obama will continue with the GOP for the next two years, he will come into his own.
Sullivan is probably correct on this.
If you go back to Bill Clinton’s presidency he was lambasted when he started to triangulate but his poll numbers started to go up. Obama’s problem has been that some in the center started to write him off as just another ideological politician who has a laundry list stemming from a political world view and who really isn’t willingto try and embrace another view. And YES…some of these independents and centrists were likely RINOS exiled from an increasingly dogmatic Republican party. But even progressives are not monolithic: for every blogger now suggesting Obama needs a primary challenge (usually the kiss of death for a sitting President but since when did things like Supreme Court justices matter?) or every Keith Olbermann Special Comment or Rachael Maddow or Ed Schultz statement of alarm, Obama could pick up some people in the center and center-left that he originally lost. Particularly if compromises later are shown to have been wise ones.
Something else could happen, too and probably not by design. There are already signs that some Tea Party members are unhappy with unemployment benefits being extended. If some GOPers compromise with Obama, look for Rush, Sean and Glenn to start to demand the GOP just say no. Tensions within the GOP will increase just as tensions with the Democratic party have increased.
It could come down to who looks more “adult” and issue oriented: the people screaming on the right or the alarmed folks warning about caving on the left or the President who keeps talking about the long-term issue and the need for some kind of substantive action, even if it isn’t entirely what one side wants? More Sullivan:
The more his liberal base attacks him, the more the center will take a second look. And look how instantly the GOP’s position has shifted. They have suddenly gone from pure oppositionism to dealing with the dreaded commie Muslim alien, thereby proving he is not what they have made him out to be. The more often we get the GOP to make actual tangible decisions on policy alongside Obama, the less able they will be able to portray him as somehow alien to the country, and the more they will legitimize him. Their House victory means they can no longer sit out there, portraying the country as somehow taken over by radical, alien forces – which they can simply oppose with ever ascending levels of hysteria and rhetoric. And the more practical and detailed and concrete the compromises, the less oxygen blowhards like Palin and Limbaugh will have to breathe.
ATTTENTION ANDRES SULLIVAN: Don’t hold YOUR breath on Palin and Limbaugh not having oxygen. They will thrive on it going after both Obama and GOPers who dare cooperate with him.
Now for the short-term benefits of resolving this tax-and-spend dilemma so swiftly. The president urgently needs to get the new START and DADT through the Senate. DADT would be a major boost for his base – and the country’s military. Getting START through is critical to his foreign policy cred. If he can pull all this off by Christmas – and the Senate should indeed stay open for an extra week – the last Congress will indeed be viewed by historians as one of the most substantive (and liberal) in recent history. And Obama will have orchestrated it – while ending up firmly planted and rebranded in the center.
But, then, on DADT Obama will have to deal with a Senate in which Senator John McCain dwells. McCain has evolved into the only person in the past 50 years who lost a Presidential race who truly seems to be suffering from a case of get-even sour grapes. Don’t hold your breath on DADT passing. The 2010 McCain who the 2000 McCain would have looked at with disdain will see to that.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.