I admit to kind of a perverse soft spot for the Mustache of Understanding. He tries so hard — way, way too hard — to present elite Beltway conventional wisdom as cutting edge thinking. He’s also, of late, trying very hard to assume the late David Broder’s throne as the Undisputed King of Bipartisan Fetishism. His latest offering is no exception.
Under the exhortation of “Go Big, Mr. Obama,” Friedman suggests as his panacea for what ills the body politic the following:
President Obama has a clear choice on how to approach the 2012 election…If he spends his time defining the future in a credible way and offering a hard, tough, realistic pathway to get there, he will not only win, but he will have a mandate to take the country where we need to go.
What is that “hard, tough, realistic pathway?” Why, he’s glad you asked:
Can [Obama] put the country on a sustainable economic recovery path at a time when, if we fail, it could be the end of the American dream? I believe the best way for Obama to do that is by declaring today that he made a mistake in spurning his own deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and is now adopting Simpson-Bowles — which already has Republican and Democratic support — as his long-term fiscal plan to be phased in after a near-term stimulus.
Now, admittedly, this is a more substantive idea than, say, 9-9-9 — a plan apparently lifted straight from the early computer game Sim City. Simpson-Bowles is badly flawed, but that’s not really the point here. It’s idiotic in only the chin-stroking, ‘stache-fondling way Friedman can be. Equally idiotic is Friedman’s imagined response to this bold presidential initiative nobody else is calling for:
If he did that, he would win politically and create a national consensus that would trump his opponents, right and left.
My gut says that if the president lays out such a plan — one that begins with him taking all the political risks on himself and then demanding the G.O.P. and his own party follow — he will be both defining himself and the future in a way that would earn him so much centrist support and respect that it would leave every possible Republican opponent in the dust, no matter how obstructionist they are or want to be.
Wow! All that centrist support! Like the huge national surge that followed the previous dead horse Friedman’s gut was beating: Americans Elect, a proposed centrist third party with a constituency of one (the MOU) and “financed by some serious hedge fund money.”
And the centrist support and respect came pouring out, with, in a nation of 320 million or so people, dozens and dozens expressing their heartfelt support. Americans Elect went utterly nowhere, like most Friedman wankery, but I mention it here because according to Slate columnist Dave Weigel, Friedman even suggested a dream presidential ticket for his dream party: Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.
It takes some serious tone-deaf wankery, in a season when Wall Street is inspiring street protests in literally every city in the country, to imagine that the dream ticket of your hedge-fund-financed political party (that just sank without a trace) is also the ticket for Obama to bring all of Washington’s warring factions together and inspire the masses.
Oh, about those warring factions:
Obama aides argue that so many G.O.P. lawmakers are committed to making his presidency fail, or have signed pledges to an antitax cult, that they would never buy into any grand bargain. I think that is true for a lot of Republicans in Congress. But I have some questions: Why are the Republicans getting away with this? Why are so many independents and even Democrats who voted for Obama sitting on their hands? Obama owns the bully pulpit of the presidency and he’s losing to Grover Norquist? Also, assuming it is all true about the G.O.P., how can Obama trump them? I think he can, if he leads in a new way.
Yes, let’s assume that “it is all true about the G.O.P.” – because, well, you know, it is true, and the failure of the supercommittee as Friedman was writing his column kind of underscored it. A lot. So let’s roll the dice and make that assumption. Where is Friedman’s evidence – any evidence at all – that Republicans, who for three years have been throwing back in Obama’s face proposals that were originally Republican ideas, and who have fought bitterly against any kind of stimulus at all on purely ideological grounds, are going to compromise – and, in Friedman’s world, hand Obama a massive political victory – in an election year? Or that they’ll subsequently step aside, gentlemen that they are, in awe of a 2012 “mandate” that, given the economy, would still be in all likelihood smaller than the mandate he had in 2008?
Ah, but I’m being picky. All it requires is that Obama “lead in a new way,” by listening to Friedman’s hedge fund manager buddies, whose disproportionate influence in DC politics is so not “a new way” that millions of Americans are presently protesting it.
And I have some questions, too. Does Friedman realize that under the constitution, Congress, not the presidential bully pulpit in an election year, actually passes laws? Does Friedman understand that both polling and political experience consistently show that his massive, supposedly unrepresented centrist hordes simply don’t exist? Does Friedman get that the federal deficit is not why our economy is wretched for most of us, but splendid for people whose spouses own $2.7 billion’s worth of shopping malls? Did Friedman grow his porn ‘stache for his starring role in the cheesy video “Debbie Does Centrist Bipartisanship?”
My guesses: No. No. No. And yes.
The Stupid, it burns. And in Friedman’s case, endlessly wanks.
