It’s a pretty good time for President Obama to crack the whip. Why he evidently didn’t earlier is still mystifying. Or maybe it’s not. He just isn’t a kick-ass-and-take-names kind of guy. But the success of his presidency may be on the line here in the next few weeks, so it’s not the worst idea for him to become one.
That's not going to happen. And perhaps Obama shouldn't make the attempt. I once worked for a pol who possessed a remarkably Obama-like temperament, but we staffers soon appreciated that efforts on our part to force unnatural changes on his part produced little but unpleasant effects.
Still, I don't see why Obama, without disturbing his essential personality, couldn't turn the political tables for a while and play the GOP's beloved game of victimization. After all, he is a victim, as we all are, of Republicans' withering malice and perpetual obstructionism.
Failure, failure, failure--the cornerstones of GOP ideology under President Obama. They root for failure, they strive for failure, they pray for it and celebrate it, they positively adore every hint, sign, or faintest evidence of it. That can be sold by Obama and Democrats as a profoundly unAmerican ideology, even if, albeit to lesser degrees, every party throughout the history of American politics has privately harbored the same hostilities.
But the connections must be explicitly made: only deeply unAmerican and indeed rather eerily foreign tactics suitable only to less exceptional nations could ever victimize a lofty American president; and those scurrilous, inscrutable tactics, the GOP has introduced here--a despicable act which has fundamentally altered America's political character, which had never ever of course rooted for America's failure. Until now.
Coolly put them on defense. Kill them softly. Lay into them with doleful, wounded recriminations. Yes it's a pity the GOP so hates America that it cheers for America's failure. Who are these people--these Others?--who indeed toil only to victimize America itself.
Hardball, played with softballs. It suits Obama's temperament.
I would dearly love to see President Obama take an approach similar to the one you suggest, Phil, but without overplaying the "victim" role. It would be great to hear some form of that theme repeated at every opportunity from now until next November in order to pound it into the thick heads of the electorate!
Posted by: Ansel M. | November 14, 2013 at 06:05 PM