We got a good long look at the second-term edition of Barack Obama last week, and he's sounding more like Bill Clinton every day.Was this guy watching the same SOTU I was?
It's not all that surprising. Over the last two years, Obama has turned repeatedly to Clinton for counsel...
Obama's rhetoric still aims high; he hasn't given up all hope of transforming American politics. But his concrete proposals these days are smaller and more Clintonian, a necessary adjustment in the face of entrenched Republican opposition.
Because Jacob Weisberg knocked this one so far out of the park, I'm simply going to quote him.
Looking beyond what he was right to call the “manufactured” fiscal crisis that continues to preoccupy Washington, Obama offered a new program that was broader and more comprehensive than his first term’s.I know that pundits love to compare current presidents to those who have held that office in the past. But there's a dose of PUMA in this particular commentary from McManus.
This includes the night’s biggest surprise, a proposed hike in the minimum wage of nearly 25 percent, to $9 an hour, which would lift millions of workers out of poverty. The speech also proposed major new investments in infrastructure and early childhood education, a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, marriage equality for homosexuals, voting reform, gun control, a U.S.-EU free-trade zone, comprehensive tax reform, market-based rules on greenhouse gas emissions, national energy conservation goals, more research into clean energy technology, an accelerated troop drawdown in Afghanistan, and more...
When Republicans won control of Congress in 1994, Bill Clinton responded with a long list of small-bore initiatives: gun safety locks, school uniforms, the v-chip, cellphones for citizen patrols, and so forth. Clinton wanted to show that he was still relevant and that he could still accomplish something even with a divided government. Obama, by contrast, has little appetite for legislative hors d’oeuvres. His program is designed to show not what he can do with a Republican Congress but what he can’t do with one.
There's an irony, of course, in the echoes of Bill Clinton that turn up in Obama's strategy today. In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, Obama not only ran against Hillary Rodham Clinton; he dismissed her husband's tenure in the White House as unimpressive.Overall, it seems to me that some people just can't let go of their "great white hope" and recognize that the black guy has his own way of doing things...and its working!
Mo'nin, Ms. Pants
ReplyDeleteHeard the same thing from a co-worker last week. When I asked him, after looking puzzled, "You've NEVER heard him speak like that?" And, then I pointed out a few BIG things that he's done through the years and he, then, had to agree. Methinks that you nailed it in your last sentence. And, THEN, of course, there's the "daddy issues" (Doc M H-P should just stop diggin'. it appears she won't).
And, THEN he had the NERVE to play golf and NOT want all of those reporters runnin' their mouths at him and sayin' nothin'.
How he handles all of this reLENTless CRAP with the continued grace and dignity that he does is, imo, TRUly a gift from God.
I'd love to talk to you about that MHP thing. An argument going on about it on twitter reminded me that Alice Walker got equally dissed by some of the same crowd over her portrayal of domestic violence in The Color Purple.
DeleteMy thought was that protecting black men from public criticism runs DEEP. I understand why. I think it was that sensitivity that MHP was reacting to. But perhaps its time for some honest dialogue. That's why I wanted to write about it as a "manood" thing rather than a "black man" thing.
Would love to and will do.
ReplyDeleteIn the mean time....
Ms. Chip featured a blogger I wasn't familiar with whose blog is entitled "The Reign Of April" and she did a piece entitled: "Does President Obama have Daddy Issues". If you haven't checked it out, do. You won't have to go too far down on the OBD in order to see it. I like what she said.
Should holla pretty shortly.