I’m tired of Drew Westen’s act. He’s little more than a professional nitpicker. And he’s not a good nitpicker. In attempting to explain how President Obama might conceivably lose his bid for reelection, Westen lists three main causes. First, he tried to work with Republicans. Second the stimulus act of 2009 was not big enough. Third, the health care bill didn’t have a public option and was too phased-in.
Do we really have to refight the stimulus battle over and over again? It passed the Senate with 61 votes, with only Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter supporting it among Republicans. The vote would ultimately cost Specter his career, as he defected to the Democrats in a desperate last-ditch effort to survive. The uniform opposition of the Republicans was shocking considering that the economy was shedding 700,000 jobs a month and they were completely responsible. But, as the New York Times reported in March of 2010, the GOP had a plan:
Before the health care fight, before the economic stimulus package, before President Obama even took office, Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader, had a strategy for his party: use his extensive knowledge of Senate procedure to slow things down, take advantage of the difficulties Democrats would have in governing and deny Democrats any Republican support on big legislation.
Total obstruction was part of the plan from the beginning. More evidence for this comes from Robert Draper’s book Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives. Draper describes a meeting on inauguration day where Frank Luntz, Newt Gingrich, and several House and Senate Republicans plotted their strategy to destroy the Obama presidency.
Despite these facts, Mr. Westen puts all the blame for the failure of bipartisanship on the president. He puts all the blame for the size of the Stimulus on the president. And when it comes to health care, Weston just pretends that Democrats like Finance Chairman Max Baucus and turncoats like Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman didn’t exist.
If you want to bitch about the president’s performance in office, that’s your right. But don’t try to rewrite history. If the president is vulnerable, there are three different reasons why. First, the Republicans destroyed the economy and then ensured that the president would not have any tools at his disposal to fix it. Second, the Supreme Court legalized billionaire-bribery. Third, the right-wing has a vast media empire whose members serve as more of an auxiliary to the GOP than as corporations or normal news outlets.
Probably the most boring political writing I see is analysis that gives the GOP no credit for being good at what they do.