A Big Idea

By TIMOTHY EGAN
NYT

Grow a spine. Flex some muscle. Man up!

In Twitter-speak, the advice to President Obama from his disheartened liberal base is to bulk up on the political equivalent of steroids, something to make this most cerebral of presidents more ripped and less reserved. They want “Bring It On, the Sequel”: let Republicans deny unemployment benefits for two million people at Christmastime while giving Mr. Potter and his ilk another tax break.

Then the president can get rid of “don’t ask, don’t tell” by executive order, just as Harry Truman integrated the armed forces. He can dare Republicans to dismantle a new health care law that prevents insurance companies from dropping people when they get sick. He can insist that the fledgling consumer protection bureau, the only bulwark in the federal government against predatory lenders and credit card carnivores, be fully funded and staffed.

Not. Gonna. Happen. One of the most revealing film clips from Obama’s past shows him at school when he became the first black president of a fractious Harvard Law Review. Young Obama, the college-age compromiser, looks eerily like middle-age Obama trying to be bipartisan at midterm. And there he was on Monday, giving in to tax cuts for all in return for a few favors for the middle class.

(More here.)