“Not A Dictator”

Obama’s declaration of ineffectuality:

By saying “I’m not a dictator,” then, Obama is admitting that he is ineffectual: that he lacks the political skill either to strike a compromise or to bend his opponents to his will. He concluded his press conference in an even more passive vein, hoping that “Congress comes to its senses a week from now, a month from now, three months from now.”

The Hill tries to put a brave face on all this, reporting that “the first months of President Obama’s second term are being built around a simple premise: No caving.” The legislative trade publication also reports that Democrats “argue that Obama is–finally–using the power of the bully pulpit to advance his agenda” and “becoming more adept at using public pressure to accomplish his political goals.”

As best we can tell, no evidence is adduced in support of this proposition. Another Hill piece, this one an op-ed by Republican consultant John Feehery, takes the opposite tack: “The tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama. The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue.”

Despite the supposed inspiration of his first campaign, hope is not a strategy.

9 thoughts on ““Not A Dictator””

  1. “The tag team of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell are currently mopping the floor with Barack Obama. The president convincingly won a second term in November, but since that time, the congressional Republican leadership has outfoxed, outmaneuvered and plain out-strategized him on just about every issue.”

    On what planet is this happening? ‘Cause I want to go there.

    I’ve been under the impression that they are a couple of gutless wonders who don’t appear to realize who and what they are dealing with.

    1. During the last debt ceiling talks Obama was only able to raise taxes on the top brackets to where they were under Clinton. He wanted to raise double the revenue. Now when Obama says we need to raise taxes on the rich to solve all of our problems, people can point out we just did that.

      1. They should let him do it. When the increased tax rates fail to produce increased tax revenue we can all have a good laugh and maybe everyone will learn something.

    1. When Obama first ran for office one of the college freshmen downstairs was ardently supporting Obama, saying “We need change! This country has to change!”

      I said, “What kind of change? Can you be more specific?”

      He replied, “I don’t know. We just need change!”

      Years pass, learning happens, and last week the same guy was now screaming, “Obama wants to raise the minimum wage with this unemployment rate?!!! What kind of idiot would do that?! Doesn’t he know anything about economics?”

      Of course another way to look at it is that four or five years ago, when he was a recent high-school graduate, he thought the President was an economic idiot. Now he’s hitting the job market with a business degree and he knows the President is an economic idiot, so nothing has really changed. ^_^

  2. That “C” word looms large here: compromise. There’s maybe four Republican Senators and a dozen House members (and I think we can all name names) who gladly vote with the Dems on most issues; there were a dozen times over the past four years where Obama/Reid/Pelosi could have peeled off that number plus some and been able to get more of his agenda in place and trumpet his ‘bipartisanship’ along with it. But basically his knowledge of politics is limited to getting elected as a minority-interest candidate with massive support from the media, and after that he’s lost.

    1. Moe Lane had a great analysis of this when he pointed out that if Obama were a gamer he’d be a munchkin mini-maxer type of player. Someone who’s play style focuses on dumping all their skill points into one stat to make it strong as possible but sacrifice all the others in lieu of making a more well rounded character. Those player are great when you need to blow something up with a powerful fireball spell or destroy a tank with the big rocket launcher power up. But you get them in a situation where you need high dodge skill or a lockpick ability and suddenly they’re stuck and can only resort to button mashing in the hopes that they happen to luck their way through. Obama has put all his skill points into the “getting elected to high office” skill. But now that he’s done that he’s left to button mashing on areas that require high economic skills and foreign policy attributes.

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