Obama’s Failure of Leadership
The president’s experience as a community organizer may have hampered his abilities to lead and order and direct. His recent fighting stance might be coming too late.
by Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
October 01, 2010
I continue to believe that the passage of universal health care is an historic achievement, and that Glenn Beck’s grandchildren will agree even if he and his followers are blind to it. But getting it through a Congress wary of major social legislation and beholden to special interests was a 14-month horror show that consumed the Obama presidency.
With the proviso that no good deed goes unpunished, Democrats are bracing for significant losses in the midterms, provoked by a backlash over government spending, and by disappointment in President Obama’s performance. After hanging back too long, Obama has finally gotten off the mat and joined the fight, setting aside his bromides to bipartisanship and punching away like a politician who wants to win, not make nice.
The campaign trail is good practice because he’ll have to become more confrontational once the election is over. Tea Party Republicans have no inclination to work with Democrats, and they’re likely to displace the few reasonable Republicans that are left. It’s hard to see where the grand bargain can be made or the deals struck to begin to address deficit spending. With nothing but stalemate and gridlock ahead, things may have to get worse, and then who will we blame?
Obama took office not wanting to fight or blame anyone, and the Republicans played him. They stood up to him and he wasn’t prepared to defy them, revealing a vulnerability that has brought the Democrats to the brink of disaster. Obama ran on the idea that his election was a sign that everybody was going to get along but he also ran on a platform, and he won with 53 percent of the vote, the biggest margin of any Democrat since LBJ. Instead of claiming his rightful mandate, he made getting along his top priority, extending an olive branch to the other side, which Republican leaders rebuffed.
(More here.)
by Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
October 01, 2010
I continue to believe that the passage of universal health care is an historic achievement, and that Glenn Beck’s grandchildren will agree even if he and his followers are blind to it. But getting it through a Congress wary of major social legislation and beholden to special interests was a 14-month horror show that consumed the Obama presidency.
With the proviso that no good deed goes unpunished, Democrats are bracing for significant losses in the midterms, provoked by a backlash over government spending, and by disappointment in President Obama’s performance. After hanging back too long, Obama has finally gotten off the mat and joined the fight, setting aside his bromides to bipartisanship and punching away like a politician who wants to win, not make nice.
The campaign trail is good practice because he’ll have to become more confrontational once the election is over. Tea Party Republicans have no inclination to work with Democrats, and they’re likely to displace the few reasonable Republicans that are left. It’s hard to see where the grand bargain can be made or the deals struck to begin to address deficit spending. With nothing but stalemate and gridlock ahead, things may have to get worse, and then who will we blame?
Obama took office not wanting to fight or blame anyone, and the Republicans played him. They stood up to him and he wasn’t prepared to defy them, revealing a vulnerability that has brought the Democrats to the brink of disaster. Obama ran on the idea that his election was a sign that everybody was going to get along but he also ran on a platform, and he won with 53 percent of the vote, the biggest margin of any Democrat since LBJ. Instead of claiming his rightful mandate, he made getting along his top priority, extending an olive branch to the other side, which Republican leaders rebuffed.
(More here.)
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