A lot of people in the progressive blogosphere are frustrated that the president seems perfectly willing to castigate Congress but totally unwilling to specify that it is the Republicans and not the Democrats who are the problem. I think it’s a valid criticism but we should also acknowledge how the president’s remarks are being reported in the corporate press:
Los Angeles Times: Obama to GOP: Put country before party
ABC News: Obama Goes On The Offensive In Michigan: Republicans Are Playing Politics At The Country’s Expense
Washington Post: Obama in Michigan: House Republicans play politics ‘at the expense of our country’
NY Times: Obama Urges Voters to Scold Republicans
My problem with the president’s approach is not that he isn’t helping himself, nor even that his approach doesn’t make perfect sense. If the corporate press is going to report that he’s calling out the Republicans even when he isn’t specifically doing that, then it’s better for him not to look like every bit the same partisan hack as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.
The problem is that in blasting Congress as a whole, he’s feeding the narrative that our government sucks, doesn’t work, and can’t do anything right. That’s true at the moment. But leaving that impression is harmful to progressive and Democratic politics over the long-term. I don’t need the president to be a bomb-thrower, but I wish he would consider the damage he does to his own cause when he feeds a blanket condemnation of Congress.
When he blames Congress, he should be clear that Congress can function if we put the right people in office.
Blasting Congress as a whole. What he actually said was certain members of Congress. The Republicans are implied.
Yes, but so are the Democrats.
I think we will just quietly disagree on this 🙂
I know certain members of Congress who are Democrats who should be blasted.
It was a very pointed event that Kent Conrad is not on the Joint Committee on the Deficit.
is the blast the enemies of the administration.
UNLEASH JOE BIDEN!! Let him get into the mud!!
Republican presidents then get to point to this narrative and say that they can and must do whatever they want as “unitary executives”.
Well I think that’s mostly the progressive criticism of his method of doing this (he’s helping himself but killing people downticket and the Democratic brand of pro-active government)…but maybe you clarifying it explicitly will get their attention.
Doubt the Repubs will do well in NJ because of Christie.
Because a president has never sought to disassociate himself with congress before? The word “congress” has like a 4% approval rating at this point, why wouldn’t Obama run against it?
Screw protecting the Democratic Party’s feelings. The bigger issue should be the fact that even if the President gets congress to act on what he wants economically, he’s so religious about “pragmatism” that his goals are fucking patent reform and an extension of things that already exist.
2013 can’t get here soon enough…
But remember, we need to make Boehner cry and retake the House next year.
Uh, actually, yeah, winning back the House should be the goal above all other goals.
That you consider this risible is…interesting.
There’s one other factor you have to account for, BooMan: anti-incumbent sentiment.
The public wants to throw the bums out, and Obama has to make sure that his messaging takes this sentiment into account and casts his opponents not just as crazy Plutocrats, but as “the bums” in question. That’s not an easy thing to do when you’re the President.
Just a couple comments:
I’m not one to argue that the President should be hyperpartisan outside of campaign events. Traditionally as said above, that job was part of the Vice President’s portfolio. So let Biden be Biden. He can always pretend that it was a gaffe.
The bigger problem with Congress is that they are embedded in a system. Dylan Ratigan’s rant hit that one right on the nose. It’s not as much a matter of bad or crazy people, it’s a system that requires them to be bad or crazy to keep their jobs. Well most of them are not bad or crazy–but there are the photogenic few.
Part of that system is the continuity staff members who know how the system works and who are key to preserving a system that has become dysfunctional. For the example, the idea of managing communications has become so complete that what the public is actually saying in their letters, contact form posts, phone calls, and Town Hall testimony is reduced to For/Against checkmarks for particular votes. And the content of legislation is written by major (financial) supporters or lobbyists. Or written in a vaccuum based on the staff’s or member of Congress’s impression of what the public wants and the technical things that must be done to get there.
The public rightly feels shut out of their own government as a result. And resents the pandering and the posturing. And the refusal of members of Congress to talk to them as if they are adults. Which legitimizes the childish rants of the Congressional crazies and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck as the proper way to discuss issues of government. Even the “kitchen table” discussion about paying our debt comes off not as helpful analogy but a pandering by someone who has never been there; it is a stereotype and a false analogy to boot.
I don’t agree. He’s acknowledging what people already feel. He’s telling us he understands our frustrations and that we deserve better. While telling us that he follows up by saying there is something we can do about it. He’s telling us to contact our reps and push them to do the right thing. Now if we happen to get a bill out of this bunch of Republican do-nothings, then the people will feel empowered.
As for calling out Congress on the whole. That’s fine. I don’t have a problem with that. Congressional Dems should pick up the baton, roll with it and call out Republicans in their interviews/appearances. How hard is it to say, ‘Pres. Obama is right. Our citizens deserve better and Democrats have been willing to do that, Republicans haven’t, etc. etc.’
I do think, however, that the American people are hearing it the way the media is reporting it. Obama is the Democratic president. And if he’s blasting Congress then he must be blasting Republicans because those are his opponents.
Postal Service proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, pulling out of health care plan
A government-sponsored enterprise (thanks, Tricky Dick) is going to try to bust its union. I guess Obama and the Democrats in Congress don’t need the votes of labor anymore.
From the first day of the Republic, the postal service was a money-losing enterprise. It should drop junk mail service, compete in parcels, and have the government subsidize first-class mail with a certification and privacy guarantee. The whole reason it is in the Constitution is to protect private political speech and writing. And to transmit the legal documents of commercial contracts and government actions. Might as well bring it back into the executive branch as a department and stop the pretense of profit-making.
Uh…wow. Wtf. Yes, let’s go private like the Netherlands! It’s been such a success!
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n09/james-meek/in-the-sorting-office
There have been other proposals as well. It’s hard to see this one getting through.
Booman, stop playing 50! Everyone one and their mother knows EXACTLY who he’s talking about! The public knows it’s the Republicans. I can’t believe you would promote these silly ass complaints.
If everybody knows what’s going on, the Obama doesn’t have to say anything!
That’s a perfect excuse for non-rhetorical-action by the president and one I keep hearing from those who are comfortable with the reality that Obama is a conservative Blue Dog Democrat.
What is “playing 50?”
The Google doesn’t know it, either.
Obama’s sense of Political Correctness PC) is killing him. Hear this, the Republicans have never laid a glove on Obama politically in spite of them calling him everything except a child of God. The guy beating up Obama is Obama himself!! Obama’s PC problem prevents him from speaking the clear unvarnished truth to the American people.
The only time Obama stated his personal opinion clearly was in the Cambridge Police incident between Sgt. Crowley and Professor Gates. The public expresssion of Barack’s opinion that Crowley was at fault in the arrest fiasco created a storm of protest in the MSM from the national association of Police Chiefs in the defense of Crowley’s actions. An apologetic trucklent Obama quickly scheduled the well publicized “beer summit” to appease the upset long blue line.
Ever since then Obama has been very very careful as to whom he chooses to blame directly for any of our national problems.
One prime example is that Obama always condems Congress for engaging in politics rather than taking care of the people’s business. His PC insists that he religiously use the word POLITICS when in reality the actual problem is IDEOLOGY and only IDEOLOGY OF THE REPUBLICANS. Why is this true? Because the Democrats as a Party don’t adhere to any IDEOLOGY, whereas IDEOLOGY is the only thing that keeps the Republican Party from IMPLODING. Therefore the obstruction in Congress is NOT POLITICS, rather it is the Republican block exercising their IDEOLOGY. (The Republicans have to keep stirring that same old glue pot if the Party is to remain together!)
Obama needs to level with the American people by quoting the exact words of the Republicans in both Houses of Congress and use their very words to show the American people that it is the exercise of Republican IDEOLOGY in Congress, and only that IDEOLOGY that is tearing this nation down. Hey Barack, let’s get on the stick and leave the PC stuff to the Republicans.
I have posted a piece that has to do with this article.
I Got Yer “Reminder for the President.” Right HERE!!!
Check it out if you have a mind to do so.
And if you don’t have a mind?
So it goes…
AG