That President Obama is now forcing a showdownwith Senate Republicans over the New Start treaty is either a fresh demonstration of his unshakable commitment to responsible policy or an opportunistic wedge gleaned from Dick Lugar et al's insurgency over "Don't ask, don't tell."
I'd like to think it's exclusively the former -- Reason engaged in an epic squabble with Fatuity -- but in this sour political environment it would be sweet indeed, if nothing else, to savor another GOP family feud.
Of course there's another possibility: Obama's showdown might also be of the Potemkin kind. The world has no doubt noticed by now that the United States is growing ungovernable and frivolous and chillingly ignorant, what with so many Jon Kyls on the loose, thus a muscular show of presidential adulthood is in urgent order. Obama knows the children will peremptorily close it, but that itself will be but more ammunition for the campaign trail.
"Sad" is an insufficient word for the cynical depths to which the contemporary GOP has reduced all policy measures -- even those including the globe's nuclear welfare -- but that, as David Axelrod recently groaned, is the sad reality in which the Obama administration finds itself. There is, it seems, nothing, absolutely nothing that Republicans are unwilling to risk in the service of striking at a Democratic presidency, right down to a thermonuclear "mishap."
At any rate, the Potemkin theory looms even more plausible when one ponders the Senate's short and winding lame schedule, which is, to put it conservatively, already brimming over. Majority Leader Reid wishes to tackle DADT, immigration and tax cuts -- each deserving of at least a year and a half of our dysfunctional Senate's petty disputatiousness -- and now a nuclear treaty with Russia?
In the best of all miserably modern worlds, reports the Times, "Democrats would ... take the treaty to the floor in December for up to seven days of debate and force Republicans to choose sides." Sen. Levin is eying early December for hearings -- just hearings, mind you -- on DADT, whose prospects are suddenly looking in excellent fettle, yet two successes in one brief session is almost unthinkable these days.
And, again, all of this will arrive amid knifefights over the GOP's fiscal insanity and its dreary opposition to stunningly sober acts such as Dream.
But whatever the fate of the New Start treaty, its title's double meaning is unmistakable. For Obama, this battle represents a New Start for combativeness. He has lighted the fuse, and the fireworks are about to begin.
Dream on my friend! this particuliar example of a thouhroughly cowed Democratic Prez coudn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag... he's just a not so smart neutered pussy cat. And to boot just a pissed-poor Constitution Scholar too!
Posted by: Eric Forat | November 22, 2010 at 04:32 PM