Field of Dashed Dreams
By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT
PEOSTA, Iowa
The president was in “Afternoon of a Faun” mode, a rural deity playing on his panpipes in the woods. Then, suddenly, he stood very still as he sensed electoral danger.
After assuring Obama that she was a supporter, an Iowa mother named Emily asked the president at a town hall at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah what had gone wrong.
Standing in a setting that was Martha Stewart-perfect — a red barn with an American flag, surrounded by white pines, red cedars and pink zinnias — the president looked breezy in khakis and white shirt. But he seemed to tense up as Emily spoke.
“So when you ran for office you built a tremendous amount of trust with the American people, that you seemed like someone who wouldn’t move the bar on us,” she said. “And it seems, especially in the last year, as if your negotiating tactics have sort of cut away at that trust by compromising some key principles that we believed in, like repealing the tax cut, not fighting harder for single-payer. Even Social Security and Medicare seemed on the line when we were dealing with the debt ceiling. So I’m just curious, moving forward, what prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?”
(More here.)
NYT
PEOSTA, Iowa
The president was in “Afternoon of a Faun” mode, a rural deity playing on his panpipes in the woods. Then, suddenly, he stood very still as he sensed electoral danger.
After assuring Obama that she was a supporter, an Iowa mother named Emily asked the president at a town hall at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah what had gone wrong.
Standing in a setting that was Martha Stewart-perfect — a red barn with an American flag, surrounded by white pines, red cedars and pink zinnias — the president looked breezy in khakis and white shirt. But he seemed to tense up as Emily spoke.
“So when you ran for office you built a tremendous amount of trust with the American people, that you seemed like someone who wouldn’t move the bar on us,” she said. “And it seems, especially in the last year, as if your negotiating tactics have sort of cut away at that trust by compromising some key principles that we believed in, like repealing the tax cut, not fighting harder for single-payer. Even Social Security and Medicare seemed on the line when we were dealing with the debt ceiling. So I’m just curious, moving forward, what prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?”
(More here.)
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