Obama: Bi-Partisan or Post-Partisan?

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: ‘Partisan’ Seeks a Prefix: Bi- or Post-
By JOHN HARWOOD
Published: December 6, 2008


(Scott Olson/Getty Images)
PALLING AROUND Barack Obama is keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon.

Six weeks before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama can already boast one striking accomplishment: persuading partisan, ideological adversaries to see him in a less partisan, less ideological light.

The reappraisal runs deeper than Mr. Obama’s photo-op pleasantries with Senator John McCain. Derided during the campaign as a purveyor of “socialism” who was guilty of “palling around with terrorists,” he has since won praise from conservatives for retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary, for naming Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser and for selecting the moderate Timothy F. Geithner, who helped draw up the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout plan, as his Treasury secretary.

More remarkably, Mr. Obama has reaped those plaudits without seeming to abandon his commitment to the same policies that conservatives routinely attacked during the campaign — his pledge to expand health care coverage, to withdraw troops from Iraq and to increase government spending on infrastructure and alternative energy projects. On the contrary, Mr. Obama has indicated that he will follow his belief in activist government with an economic stimulus package much larger than what he proposed in the campaign. And there has been, so far, very little grumbling from conservatives.

All this raises the question: can Mr. Obama indeed be forging the new style of politics he invoked so often during the election — one that transcends the partisan divisions that have marked recent administrations? If so, what will he replace it with, a bipartisan style of governance that splits the differences between competing ideological camps, or a “post-partisan” politics that narrows gaps between red and blue or even renders them irrelevant?

Actually, insiders in Mr. Obama’s emerging team foresee a third option: a series of left-leaning programs that draw on Americans’ desire for action and also on Mr. Obama’s moderate, even conservative, temperament, to hurdle the ideological obstacles that have lately paralyzed Washington....

***

In the end, however, the possibilities for a politics that breaks traditional patterns may depend less on Mr. Obama’s talents than on widespread weariness with the dogma of ideologues — of the left and the right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/weekinreview/07harwood.html?pagewanted=all

[Hugin]

1. Although, I would prefer non-partisan, I do see the beginnings of a shift.

No, we won't wake-up on Jan. 21st, 2009 to a U.S.A. where the streets are paved with gold. (Although to many, myself
included, it will seem to be so.) I'm beginning to think President Obama means to make us a whole Country again.

It will take time. Which, I don't mind, because to do it properly requires time. If we were to quickly make a radical shift,
it would last only a short while before the pendulum again swings back too far the other way. Easy come, easy go.

It took us 50 or more years to get into this state of being.

Now, that said... There are a few problems where people's lives and livelihoods are being dangerously effected by
the Status-quo. These issues require prompt action and I'm glad to hear action is already being brought to bear as
soon as the transition occurs.

But, is it soon enough? Only time will tell.