I thought the House Republicans had a rather artful response to the president’s phony baloney health care “summit.” As proof of this artfulness, Roberts Gibbs responded today with, more or less, nothing.
Though in that nothing, there’s a sentence that shows exactly why this president can’t bring himself to work with Republicans or relatively centrist Democrats: “The President is adamant that we seize this historic moment to pass meaningful health insurance reform legislation.”
Can anyone tell me why on earth this moment is historic? I guess it would be historic if the Democrat bill passed, but since it didn’t I can’t think of anything that makes this moment particularly historic.
But, of course, this administration started off behaving as though great achievements were inevitable. The president’s underpants gnome mindset is on display here. He was elected, therefore he is a great and historic president. I think only three presidents, Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, achieved genuinely historic feats through their mere election. Every other historic president has had to work at it. And that’s what Obama won’t do.
And how do we know he won’t do it? Back to Gibbs: “The President looks forward to reviewing Republican proposals that meet the goals he laid out at the beginning of this process . . .” Translation: “I look forward to using you to achieve my ends.” I understand this is how a lot of very successful businessmen approach negotiations, but they would never say it so bluntly. Beginning a negotiation in such a manner strikes me as an admission that you’re not really going to be negotiating.
If the president would back down from his grandiose plans and simply look for measures that improve the current system, rather than completely overhaul it, he could find a lot of Republican votes on a lot of issues, and the end result would have a chance of being good for the country. But he won’t consider half-measures, because this is an “historic moment,” because he is an historic president, which means that he will only attempt historically large changes.
Posted by Apollo in Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!