Late Night Video — President Obama Discusses Getting Politics Done
This video is from the White House and comes from a surprise visit President Obama made to a group of College Democrats, Republicans and Independents back in March. This is very compelling — if anything because this philosophy of governing is very evident in how he has worked to date. He knows that marrying politics to principle does some disservice to both, but it is how this democracy works. As long as the other side shows up and has a vote, you don’t always get what you want. But you take what you can to come back another day:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CemfB_Z6elY[/youtube]
Tags: Late Night Video, President Obama
More mush from the wimp.
JFK: “We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Obama: “Lower your expectations, and you won’t be disappointed.”
Thank you for sharing this Cass.
And you do know that JFK pretty notoriously stayed away from his liberal wing when he was in office, right?
Yeah, thought not.
And it is sometimes interesting (although it is getting old) that when you talk about Democracy as compromise — which it is — the puck’s of the world see that as *weakness*. We often talk about the bend to authoritarianism by the far right — apparently the far left has the same taste for it.
American has been burdened by trickle-down, dereg, and cheap labor policies for thirty years now. Conservatives have implanted this bad philosophy in our laws and also in our minds. It is a long national nightmare that must be ended.
The task of a Democratic President must be to exert leadership to get these falsehoods out of our laws and out of our minds. Not to compromise with them and extend them, which only validates them in the minds of the public.
A Congress isn’t going to take the initiative. It will require Presidential leadership. Americans already know something is deeply wrong. It will take a leader to explain to them what it is, to lead the way, and thus to create his own groundswell.
In 2001, Democrats were beaten to a standstill by the trickle-down lies. They could not stop more tax cuts for the rich. But they rallied and were able to impose the ten-year sunset, thus handing off the torch of Democratic idealism, now down to a spark, for Obama to pick up ten years later.
But Obama dropped the ball, in the name of his damned compromise.
It will require Presidential leadership.
There is leadership — but this leadership is in the business of getting what he can get done. This beats playing to the purity caucus and getting nothing whatsoever. Because this “Presidential leadership” quite utterly forgets that there are 436 votes in the House and 100 in the Senate. And you don’t get the majority of both (especially Democrats) via fiat.
As long as other people have votes in this thing, you won’t get everything you want. This is a feature of the system — not a bug.