E.J. Dionne: Why the Uniter Divided Us

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Why the Uniter Divided Us
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Monday, January 19, 2009; A19

There are many reasons why most Americans are not mourning President Bush's departure. But our new president would do well to concentrate on the deeper causes of the public's disaffection with the man headed to Texas.

From the very beginning of his presidency, won courtesy of a divisive Supreme Court decision that abruptly ended his contest with Al Gore, Bush misunderstood the nature of his lease on power, the temper of the country and the proper role of partisanship in our political life. His win-at-all-costs strategy in Florida became a template for much of his presidency, reflected especially in the way the Justice Department was politicized.

Bush did not respect the obligation of a leader in a free society to forge a durable consensus. He was better at announcing policies than explaining them. He dismissed legitimate opposition and plausible doubts about the courses he wished to pursue. It is partly because of these failures that Americans reacted by selecting a successor with such a profoundly different political personality.

Barack Obama's first response to a political problem is to offer a detailed analysis and put the challenge into some larger context. He loves sparring with his intellectual adversaries. And his "if you have a better idea, I'll take it" approach is the antithesis of the my-way-or-the-highway politics of the past eight years.

Bush was capable of considerable charm, but he never really engaged his opponents. He rolled over them. He did not try to win expansive electoral majorities. Instead, he sought to build a compact, ideologically pure coalition that he could use on behalf of dramatic conservative departures. He claimed mandates he did not have....

***

Our new president will make his own characteristic mistakes. He risks overestimating his capacity to persuade his most implacable foes. He may forget that a two-party system inevitably creates its own dynamic of loyalty and opposition.

But he is decidedly not an us-vs.-them guy. He gets both the uses and the limits of partisanship. He has been known to quote the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr on the dangers of moral arrogance. He could make nuance and complexity cool again. Of course it will take more than that to be successful. But it's a start.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/18/AR2009011801436_pf.html

[Tangerine LaBamba]

1. I'm a fan of Dionne..........

His analyses are usually well-reasoned, thoroughly informed, and a pleasure to read.

But I think he misses the boat completely with this piece.

Chimpy Fucknuts was little more than a pawn for the neocons with whom he surrounded himself, at the behest of the Carlyle Group and the Saudi royal family, no doubt. He has proven beyond any doubt that he lacks the intellectual acumen and political skill ever to have functioned as any kind of competent President.

He was never going to be anything but their monkey on a chain, and the programs in Africa, while I applaud them, were little more than bones thrown to a particularly needy group to assuage whatever criticism might have come his way. The drug companies, no doubt, benefited somehow, of that I am certain. After all, that is all his boosters could point to as an accomplishment as the Farewell Tour was underway.

Fucknuts didn't fail. He succeeded as the cheerleader he always was and always will be. That's all there was to him - cheerleading skills. In that, he did just fine. The man was never fit for the office, and that is why his time spent there, to our eternal regret and detriment, has placed him in the pantheon of Great Failures.

[Maccagirl]

2. Dionne pulled his punches, as usual.

Then again, if he had written about the real Bush failures, he wouldn't have a column anymore-the Bushies are known to be ruthless.