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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: They Sure Showed That Obama AM I crazy, or wasnt the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had all but lost control of the agenda in Washington, declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. Obama Losing Stimulus Message War was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldnt possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was a steaming pile of garbage. Less than a month into Obamas term, we dont (and cant) know how hell fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithners uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulsons first mate. But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again. On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture. Its why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago, he said. We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of 07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls. But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide. The stimulus battle was more of the same. This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking, he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didnt matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: If you watched cable TV, youd see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe. For Axelrod, the moral is not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think. Heres a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the inevitable Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesnt recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last weeks. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill. A useful template for the current political dynamic can be found in one of the McCain campaigns more memorable pratfalls. Last fall, it was the Beltway mantra that Obama was doomed with all those working-class Rust Belt Democrats whod flocked to Hillary in the primaries. The beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys incessantly interviewed in bars and diners would never buy the skinny black intellectual. Nor would the dead-ender Hillary women. The McCain camp not only bought into this received wisdom, but bet the bank on it, pouring resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin before abandoning them and doubling down on Pennsylvania in the stretch. The sucker-punched McCain lost all three states by percentages in the double digits. The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama losing control, also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to generational theft. F.D.R.s New Deal had been an abject failure. This barrage did shave a few points off the stimuluss popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washingtons condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government cant create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal. In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The presidents job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts. At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that perhaps weve overanalyzed it, we dont know what were talking about. But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating victory. Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimuluss unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that the House Republicans zero votes for the Obama presidencys stimulus package is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties. There hasnt been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms. Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the partys hard-liners in Washington loathe him. Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steeles argument against the stimulus package is that in the history of mankind no federal, state or local government has ever created one job. As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign. This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those zombie banks that were being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but thats not the hand America has been dealt. As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. Thats the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and theres no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washingtons conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent. But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isnt turned around, he told the crowd, then youll have a new president. The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obamas clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on. Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didnt happen either.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture. Its why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago, he said. We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of 07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls. But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide. this is all such bs. opposition? it's all orchestrated for the rubes. it's like a play. the competition, not opposition, is who's going to get what part. the lead actor for this production was chosen long ago.
1. rube - a person who is not very intelligent or interested in culture
I would say the term DUFFLE-HEAD firts most of the R and D politicians better. Read my new tag line for an explanation of the term.
Oh what a DUFFLE-HEAD that Barack Obama is !!! Duffle-Head (As used in a Felix the Cat cartoon) A wicked person of limited intelegence but with pretenses of intelectual grandeur. Their only successful endevors are usually the invention of self punishment machines.
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