Legal Commentary

The Post Partisan Unity Schtick Revisited

By Big Tent Democrat

Mark Schmitt, November 17, 2008:

The massive resistance Republicans posed to Clinton in 1993 is impossible to imagine today. The Republican coalition is utterly shattered, and the angry white Palin wing of the party, for all its visibility, is a minority even within a minority. [. . .] Obama, like other reconstructive leaders, will have to challenge some of the assumptions and institutions that come from the old era, just as FDR couldn't make lasting change until he had broken the Supreme Court's prevailing beliefs about the limits to government involvement in the economy. In one of the first articles about Obama's political career, from when he was first running for the Illinois Senate in 1995, he is quoted as telling the crowd that "it's time for politicians and other leaders to ... see voters, residents, or citizens as producers of change. ... What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer, as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them?"

Fast forward to September 7, 2010, Steve Benen complaining about the WaPo:

This Washington Post headline features one of the most annoying words in politics: "Early on, Obama was more polarizing than we knew." [. . .] I suppose the point is that Obama wasn't supposed to be polarizing, and Balz's piece seems to suggest that it's the president's fault he ended up this way. That strikes me as deeply misguided[. . . .] The article suggests Obama, before getting elected, was more committed to putting partisan divisions behind us. As far as I can tell, though, Obama was equally committed to this after getting elected, but ran into a Republican Party more intent on destroying Obama than working with him. [. . .] The result was a president willing to compromise on just about every possible issue, and a GOP that refused to even consider a constructive role in policymaking.

Noonecouldhaveknown it would work out this way.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on September 07, 2010 (boomark / email).