I have now decided to put this off to my next post and to revert to the ongoing debate which we have been having about the merits of the President’s policies and the constant charge that he is ineffective and a poor leader, which comes from both sides if the political spectrum.
In my long debate with Leonard Levenson Esq. of Manhattan, NY, which can be found in my blog posting "The Trojan Horse – Comments II (continued)," I had the very unusual result of having my protagonist actually admit that I am right.
This was so satisfying that I cannot resist quoting it again:
You may have a point when you suggest that my anger at Obama is really disappointment at the lack of progress that I hoped for. Perhaps no Democrat could have made any substantial progress against the know nothing Republicans. I think I would have preferred a battle royale (even a losing one) than accepting a weakened Health care Bill, an inadequate deficit reduction bill and the many other compromises, which Obama probably was forced to make.
I only wish that more people had such an open mind.
At this point I want to conclude this debate by sharing with my readers an exchange, which I had with Robert Malchmna Esq. of Brooklyn, NY. He called to my attention a New York Times Magazine article entitled "What Would Hillary Clinton Have Done?" I assumed that the article was sent to me with approval and wrote back:
Thanks! Yes I do find it interesting. It parallels to a large extent what I have been saying, and say even more emphatically in my next post.
But then Malchman called to my attention a comment that he had posted on the Times web site that clearly indicated that he agreed neither with me nor with the Times article; He wrote:
I think in broad policy areas, the writer is correct that there was little to distinguish Obama and Clinton during the primaries. The reason I voted for Clinton (and I agonized over it) is that I was afraid that Obama's first years in office would be like Bill Clinton's and Jimmy Carter's -- that is, a struggle to understand how to move the levers of power and to get a legislative agenda through Congress. Clinton, both from her time as First Lady and by then eight years as Senator, knew how to work those levers.
I believe my fears have proved correct. Obama certainly has some substantial accomplishments, but where's the strong public option for health care? Where's the closing of the budget gap by taxing families making over $250,000? Indeed, where's the surtax on incomes over $1 million? Obama failed to strike while the iron was hot, with a House majority and 60 votes in the Senate before Ted Kennedy's death. That health care didn't pass until late in his second year is a disgrace. That the Bush tax cuts were left to the lame-duck session and extended for the wealthy is a disgrace. That the debt-ceiling issue wasn't resolved at the same time as the Bush tax cuts is a disgrace. Obama seems woefully naive about Republicans and their single-minded goal to defeat him, regardless of the damage they do to this country. I don't think Clinton is so naive; she appreciates the machinations and goals of the vast, right-wing conspiracy. No one can know for sure, of course, but I think the country would have been better with President Hillary Clinton.
I frankly was taken aback and disappointed and responded with:
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Dear Robert,
I was rather surprised and disappointed by your Comment 21 as posted to the Times site.
I keep preaching facts first, then opinions based on those facts. You assume that "Clinton, both from her time as First Lady and by then eight years as Senator, knew how to work those levers. But there is no evidence to support this. There are no facts to support this. It is pure speculation. Her accomplishments as Senator are hardly existent.
If we go by her and her husband’s accomplishments, they are meager indeed. As fist lady she spectacularly failed to get any traction in her own party for her health care bill and as I said in my post "The Trojan Horse - Comments":
Clinton did a terrific job in raising taxes early in his term, which together with an agreement with Fed Chairman Greenspan, to lower interest rates, brought on the eight most prosperous years in a very long time and wiped out the deficit. But he was lucky to get it passed. It passed by a tie vote in the Senate with the VP breaking the tie, which by the way shows that bringing prosperity is not a sure fire way to win a mid-term election.
Nevertheless, Clinton after losing the midterms, swung Right, employed that hired gun, Dick Morris, became famous for triangulation, and presided over, among many other things, the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act, which probably was largely responsible for the bank crisis, presided over the abolition of Welfare, signed into law the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and couldn't stop the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). (And this wasn't just in the first term, it extended into the second.)
Yet the base never savaged him. Somebody tell me why these Presidents are treated so differently?
Well, maybe because Obama unrealistically promised both to be a post-partisan and a transformational President, which are contradictory and impossible to achieve. But it should have been obvious that these are aspirational goals, not achievable ones.
You say: "Obama failed to strike while the iron was hot, with a House majority and 60 votes in the Senate before Ted Kennedy's death." without getting the facts as to how long this window was. If you count when Franken was sworn in and when Kennedy died we have a window of less than two month from July 8, 2009, when Franken was sworn in and August 26th when Kennedy died. Not too much of a window to get anything done in a Senate where the rules, at best, require slow movement. But even that is deceptive because the 60 votes were never really there because Kennedy was hospitalized on January 21, 2009, long before he died, and after that made only rare appearances on the Senate floor. Furthermore there were Democratic defections, most notably Lieberman, who threatened to himself lead a filibuster against the public option, and some other Dems as well.
Compare Obama's achievement against any other Democratic President (set forth in my blog posts "The Trojan Horse - Comments" and "The Trojan Horse – Comments II") since Roosevelt with the exception of Johnson, and he comes out well ahead in accomplishments, despite the fact that he has faced far more partisan and reckless opposition.
The Bush tax cuts extension was a calculated decision that getting the treaty with Russia, unemployment insurance, and some other stimulative measures was a careful balancing act. The economy was first and we could not leave a major security risk, and the tax cut extension was for only two years, not as you imply for an indefinite period.
On the debt ceiling issue, 20/20 vision is wonderful. Did anybody, and I mean anybody, worry about a debt ceiling that had routinely been passed every time it came up, at that point. Oh, but Obama is tasked with seeing things that nobody else saw. And who says he could have gotten it. If he had raised it and not gotten it, he would have been savaged for having been the one who gave the Tea party the idea. Besides a two year extension would have been almost unprecedented.
It is very easy to list things undone. But what counts is what was done. Compare all the Democratic Presidents since Roosevelt with the exception of Johnson, including Kennedy, for their accomplishments.
FACTS FIRST, THEN OPINIONS!!!!!
Regards,
Emil
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I was disappointed not to have received a concession from Malchman similar to what I got from Levenson.
But the Pundits keep up their attacks on Obama. I have came across another two lately, both in Newsweek, which under the aegis of Tina Brown tries to recover its audience by becoming ever more sensationalist. They are “The Untransformational President" by Michael Tomasky, where the author says; “He signed a debt deal in which the Republicans took him to the cleaners” but like all the others neglects to tell us what the deal is or why he considers it to be a bad deal. Facts – Where are the facts? I have demonstrated, heretofore that it was in fact an advantageous deal. and "Oval Office Appeaser" by William Broyle, who compares our President to Chamberlain. (Talk about over the top) Apparently these people, like the Tea Party, consider any compromise to be appeasement, no matter how advantageous it is.
Are these friends? Or as Lenny Levenson referred to them “putative friends?”
Now we have had a hurricane that descended on our East coast. Will Obama be tasked for not having stopped it, or at least be charged, no matter what he does, with having a Brownie moment, so that it can be claimed that Obama is the new Bush. Does anybody really believe that?
I am reminded of an incidence when my daughter was about three years old and a thunder and lightening storm descending upon us. She was frightened and she said to me: “ Daddy, Make it Stop!” I explained that I did not have that power, and she exclaimed, “Well, You could at least try!”
We are not children and the President is not our Daddy!!! He is not God, nor a dictator, nor does he have a magic wand!!!
It is time to stop bellyaching and concentrate our fire on those whose vision for our country is anathema to me, and I hope to most of you. It is time to close ranks unless anyone out there truly thinks that the candidates of the Republican party dominated by the Tea Party, will do anything other than make our short range situation worse, and destroy all the things that we have built, in a truly bi-partisan way, from Theodore Roosevelt (R), to Wilson (D), To FDR (D), to Johnson (D) to Nixon (R) and even Clinton who wiped out our deficit and put us on the path to wiping out our National Debt, now Barack Obama (D) and even Eisenhower (R) who so meticulously built our Highway System, now under attack as just another socialist boondoggle that needs to be privatized.
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