Frank Rich... Have You Been Reading My Posts Again ???

[WillyT]

:evilgrin:

From Rich's column today:

<snip>

It’s become so easy to pin financial elitism on Democrats that the morning after Brown’s victory the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee had the gall to accuse them of being the “one party who bailed out the automakers and insurance companies.” Never mind that the Bush White House gave us the bank (and A.I.G.) bailouts, or that the G.O.P. is even more in hock than Democrats to corporate patrons. The Obama administration is so overstocked with Goldman Sachs-Robert Rubin alumni and so tainted by its back-room health care deals with pharmaceutical and insurance companies that conservative politicians, Brown included, can masquerade shamelessly as the populist alternative.

Last year the president pointedly studied J.F.K.’s decision-making process on Vietnam while seeking the way forward in Afghanistan. In the end, he didn’t emulate his predecessor and escalated the war. We’ll see how that turns out. Meanwhile, Obama might look at another pivotal moment in the Kennedy presidency — and this time heed the example.

The incident unfolded in April 1962 — some 15 months into the new president’s term — when J.F.K. was infuriated by the U.S. Steel chairman’s decision to break a White House-brokered labor-management contract agreement and raise the price of steel (but not wages). Kennedy was no radical. He hailed from the American elite — like Obama, a product of Harvard, but, unlike Obama, the patrician scion of a wealthy family. And yet he, like that other Harvard patrician, F.D.R., had no hang-ups about battling his own class.

Kennedy didn’t settle for the generic populist rhetoric of Obama’s latest threats to “fight” unspecified bankers some indeterminate day. He instead took the strong action of dressing down U.S. Steel by name. As Richard Reeves writes in his book “President Kennedy,” reporters were left “literally gasping.” The young president called out big steel for threatening “economic recovery and stability” while Americans risked their lives in Southeast Asia. J.F.K. threatened to sic his brother’s Justice Department on corporate records and then held firm as his opponents likened his flex of muscle to the power grabs of Hitler and Mussolini. (Sound familiar?) U.S. Steel capitulated in two days. The Times soon reported on its front page that Kennedy was at “a high point in popular support.”

Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership to challenge those who threaten our own economic recovery and stability at a time of deep recession and war? That we can’t is a powerful indicator of why what happened in Massachusetts will not stay in Massachusetts if this White House fails to reboot.

<snip>

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/opinion/24Rich.html?pagewanted=print

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From WillyT 12/18/09 (with Video & Text): http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7267247

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:hi:

[liberalmike27]

1. Isn't That Great

When you hear, or read something that slips in the media, that you've posted somewhere.

I've seen crap emerging in the last few years that I posted two or three years before. It's so validating, to use an overused word these days. Feels good!!

Way to go.

Of course, I, like yourself, know it is a lot of "us" that are doing it.

[WillyT]

4. I Don't Take It Too Seriously, But...

I do get a big smile on my face, and think to myself, "Now where have I heard that before?"

:D

:hi:

[Tansy_Gold]

2. "Such utter contempt" is the phrase that leaps out from JFK's speech

That "utter contempt" of the corporate executives has only grown.

[QC]

3. "Can anyone picture Obama exerting such take-no-prisoners leadership...."

No. And neither can anyone else who's not a Twirly-Eyed True Believer.

That's his biggest problem. No one can imagine him doing something that might offend the powerful interests that are destroying this country. He's just too cool, too above it all for that sort of thing.

[WillyT]

5. Hee...

:kick:

[Edweird]

6. Yeah, he 'might'. Just like monkeys 'might' fly outta my ass. K&R