Tues. Jan. 1, 2013:
Dear Worthies,
A Republican friend just emailed me, blaming President Obama for turning to Vice-president Joe Biden
at the 11th hour of Fiscal Cliff negotiations with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
But a Democratic voice [oops, sorry, a "Democrat friend"], retorts with the following:
I knew that Republicans would immediately ridicule Obama for turning over the final "Cliff" negotions to Biden.
They're doing it right now, as I write this, on Fox News.
But if you or I were Obama, we probably would have done the same thing.
And under the circumstances, you or I would have been shrewd to do so.
Boehner, Graham, Kantor, McCain, McConnell, Ryan all DESPISE Obama as a person, and he knows it. If you must go to the dance, you need a willing dance partner.
Obama is NOT a "pol" like the rest of them, nor a charmer like FDR or
Dixon, Illinois' own Ronnie Reagan [there's ONE good politician from Illinois!].
Obama doesn't like the phony lubrication that "pols" have to do, and opponents & even allies see that as arrogant elitism.
Obama has led when it comes to USA beginning to include black people & gays & latinas into high-level decision-making.
Obama has led when it comes to a Newtown mourning speech, as Clinton did after Oklahoma Citiy & Bush did at the World Trade Center.
Obama has led when it comes to even more aggressive droning of Al Qaeda & risking the Osama bin Laden raid -- more than what
VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY puppeteered GWB to do.
Obama has led when it comes to finding the aides that design a brilliant campaign ground-game.
But, does Obama's arsenal of "leadership skills" include glad-handing with individual Congressmen?
Fuggeddabbouttit. He doesn't even seem to have any personal friends.
Bill, as we know, had too many friends -- putting stains on their blue dresses, and pardoning low-lifes at the end of his term.
Obama knows he's no good at this political Oil. He knows GOP pols loathe him for lacking it.
He knows that Biden has been doing the Capitol Hill grease thing for 40 years, and JOE's chances of getting some resolution are infinitely better for gazillions of American taxpayers & wounded veterans & indebted students than Barack's social-turn-off manner EVER would -- unless Barack just lay down & gave them everything they asked for -- which he already did on the Debt Ceiling and Global Warming and Immigration and countless other Tea Party sacred cows.
[Not that he's alone! Any Republicans, fer chrissakes, who stood up to the Tea Party got Lugared!]
And Obama surely knows that Republicans will have a field-day criticizing his handoff to Uncle Joe, at a critical moment.
But he was willing to take the inevitable FoxNoise hit, to increase many-fold the chances at a least-bad deal for millions of struggling citizens. And yes, the deal we now have SUX -- mostly another gift to extremist blackmail from both Right & Left. [See Nate Silver's
article -- again.]
What were Obama's options to using Joe Biden?
1. To get NOTHING -- from an abusive Mitch McConnell [who in 2010 had announced that the 1 priority he had for HIS leadership style was to make Obama a 1-term president! How can anyone deal with a guy like that, in a system like ours!]. Senator McConnell is, of course, up for reelection in 2014 from a rabidly right-wing Kentucky. McConnell, Obama, and Reid were getting no where for the country's economy except the looming Cliff: sudden, draconian fiscal measures designed months ago by dug-in ideologue Republicans, deft at political blackmail,
2. OR, Obama could take a 24-hour Dale Carnegie course in the art of Good Ol' Boy charm, and cave, giving McConnell everything down to his underwear, so that Mitch wouldn't get Primaried in 2014. [See Nate Silver's article.]
You may recall that in January or February of 2009, the Obamas made clumsy, early efforts to have a bunch of GOP leadership to the White House for one Big Lunch. And right there is an example of Obama's "leadership personality" problem: He is clearly not good at the daily FDR/LBJ arm-twisting, or Clinton flattering & schmoozing, so those Jan. 2009 reach-outs took the form of a Big Lunch, rather than Jefferson's weekly or monthly small dinners at Monticello -- where seating was "pell-mell" with no one at the head of the table, and with rotating guest-lists.] GOP "leadership's" constituents have demanded that, if they don't want to be Primaried by Tea Parties, financed with Koch Brothers' money, they better keep heaping abuse on that goddamn Muslim Socialist [read 'black guy named Hussein," who's "not like us"]. It's a little hard to negotiate with folks who have been fear-mongering & filibustering every single appointment you make, every single bill you propose -- since Jan. 20, 2009! Pelosi gets blamed for rushing through Obamacare without "consulting" GOP leadership, during that short window when Dems had a filibuster-proof Senate & a House majority. [Y'know what those "consultations" would have done: Kill the bill, with huge A.M.A. and Insurance Industry pressure -- just like Hillarycare.]
Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Reagan & Tip O'Neill, even as recently as Bill Clinton -- NONE of them has faced the maniacal, polarized talk-radio-fueled opposition facing the Black Muslim Socialist named Barack Hussein Obama. When the South seceded, Lincoln only had to maneuver with
Democratic Unionists. The "Secesh" crazies were all gone. In 1994-5, all Clinton had to do, in facing Newt & the crazy Contract With America guys, was to stand aside, and let them close down the government & impeach him and thereby self-destruct with reliable Republican overreach.
