For those of you who don’t know what “the reveal” is just google “The Reveal” & Obama and a post by yours truly should be in the top 50 results. If that is too much work for your lazy ass, just read this quote from Henry IV, Part 1
I know you all, and will awhile uphold
The unyoked humour of your idleness.
Yet herein will I imitate the sun,
Who doth permit the base contagious clouds
To smother up his beauty from the world,
That when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may be more wondered at
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.
What follows is no “The American President” smack down… but it is something.
By Greg Sargent
* Obama team aggressively moving to reset the dynamic on jobs: The notable thing about the current standoff over Obama’s jobs bill is that the White House seems to be aggressively trying to reset a dynamic that has repeatedly bedeviled the President in the past.
Yesterday Republicans came out against Obama’s plan to fund his proposal largely by raising taxes on the rich, and signaled a willingness to entertain passing only parts of his jobs bill. But Obama and his advisers continue to rebuff the GOP’s overtures, such as they are. Rather than signaling a willingness to compromise at the outset, as Obama and Dems repeatedly have done previously, Obama advisers continue to insist the GOP must pass his whole jobs package.
The exchange this morning on ABC News between Obama senior adviser David Axelrod and George Stepanopoulos is notable:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Is it all or nothing?
AXELROD: The President has a package. The package works together. We need to do many things to get this economy moving and people back to work, not just one thing. Tokenism isn’t enough. We want them to pass the plan. The American people want them to pass the plan. We don’t want to play games. We don’t want to engage in brinkmanship. We want to put people back to work. This package will do that. They ought to act now.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So it’s all or nothing?
AXELROD: We want them to act now on this package. We’re not in a negotiation to break up the package. It’s not an a la carte menu. It is a strategy to get this country moving.
Stephanopoulos is echoing the GOP framing of the debate here, but Axelrod isn’t taking the bait. Even if Obama advisers don’t expect the plan to pass in its current form, and are staking out this hard line only to strengthen their leverage, that alone is notable, and represents an effort to try a new approach, one rooted in a more accurate reading of the current political reality than the one that drove Obama’s approach in past standoffs. Make no mistake: If this approach holds, it’s a major reset.