Wimp in the White House
With President Obama capitulating to John Boehner on when he'd be permitted to deliver his jobs speech to Congress, Michael Tomasky wonders whether the president will ever fight for policies he believes in.
by Michael Tomasky
The Daily Beast
August 31, 2011 6:26 PM EDT
Boy, do I get depressed when I read things like this, from White House press spokesman Jay Carney the other day: “The president hopes that members of Congress of both parties, having returned from their August recess, will come back imbued with the spirit of bipartisan compromise, and imbued with the urgency required to address the needs of our economy and the needs of our workforce.”
And this: “There will be plenty of reasons for people on both sides of the aisle to like it” (with “it” referring to the president’s soon-to-be-unveiled jobs plan). That’s White House “Principal Deputy Press Secretary” Joshua Earnest (Earnest! Did Dickens name this guy?). I just shudder to think that the president is going to head into this fall’s battle over the economy while sticking to these soupy clichés and the worldview behind them. How much evidence do they need to see that Republicans will return to Washington imbued with the spirit of partisan hostility? When will Obama ever utter fighting words?
I hope — alas, against hope — that the White House is keeping a scorecard of this year so far. That scorecard reads Republicans 2, Obama 0 (the threatened government shutdown and the debt deal), covering a period during which the president’s approval ratings have sagged by about 10 points, and this even though he iced Osama bin Laden. What the Republicans are doing is working. It’s pretty nearly working perfectly. It doesn’t matter that the GOP’s disapproval numbers are high. People vote for individual candidates, not parties, and Obama is now in trouble in some big states in head-to-head matchups with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Obviously the people in the White House know all this. They just don’t seem to want to do anything about it.
(More here.)
by Michael Tomasky
The Daily Beast
August 31, 2011 6:26 PM EDT
Boy, do I get depressed when I read things like this, from White House press spokesman Jay Carney the other day: “The president hopes that members of Congress of both parties, having returned from their August recess, will come back imbued with the spirit of bipartisan compromise, and imbued with the urgency required to address the needs of our economy and the needs of our workforce.”
And this: “There will be plenty of reasons for people on both sides of the aisle to like it” (with “it” referring to the president’s soon-to-be-unveiled jobs plan). That’s White House “Principal Deputy Press Secretary” Joshua Earnest (Earnest! Did Dickens name this guy?). I just shudder to think that the president is going to head into this fall’s battle over the economy while sticking to these soupy clichés and the worldview behind them. How much evidence do they need to see that Republicans will return to Washington imbued with the spirit of partisan hostility? When will Obama ever utter fighting words?
I hope — alas, against hope — that the White House is keeping a scorecard of this year so far. That scorecard reads Republicans 2, Obama 0 (the threatened government shutdown and the debt deal), covering a period during which the president’s approval ratings have sagged by about 10 points, and this even though he iced Osama bin Laden. What the Republicans are doing is working. It’s pretty nearly working perfectly. It doesn’t matter that the GOP’s disapproval numbers are high. People vote for individual candidates, not parties, and Obama is now in trouble in some big states in head-to-head matchups with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Obviously the people in the White House know all this. They just don’t seem to want to do anything about it.
(More here.)
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