There are a lot of things I like about Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia but I’m not going to miss him. He says too many stupid things. I can understand what he means when he argues that Obama took too passive of a role in the construction of his health care bill. We wound up with five different bills produced by five different committees, and the momentum basically stalled-out. But you can’t really say he lost his credibility as a leader when he actually got the bill passed against the longest of odds. And this is just ridiculous:
Webb also said that if Obama had opted for a smaller measure, he would have stood a chance of winning the support of a significant number of Republicans on Capitol Hill.
Jim Webb has to know better than this. Obama’s bill wasn’t opposed because it was “big.” It was opposed because it was his bill. It was supposed to be his Waterloo, remember? Obama was never going to get any support for the bill from Republicans, and pretending otherwise is one of the reasons he didn’t get a better bill a lot sooner in his administration. And what would we have now? A smaller bill? Millions less covered? Less consumer protections?
It’s this kind of ridiculous analysis that is crippling our country’s ability to face up to the reality of the modern Republican Party. Nitpick the president if you must. But he’s not the problem. In fact, in so many ways, he has been the solution. Because our government would be so bereft of common sense and basic morals if McCain, Palin, McConnell, and Boehner were in charge that you would never mistake that country for this one.
