FRANK RICH: The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency

[FourScore]

Op-Ed Columnist
The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency
By FRANK RICH
Published: March 6, 2010


EXCERPT:

...Now that we have finally arrived at the do-or-die moment for Obama’s signature issue, we face the alarming prospect that his presidency could be toast if he doesn’t make good on a year’s worth of false starts. And it won’t even be the opposition’s fault. If too many Democrats in the House defect, health care will be dead. The G.O.P. would be able to argue this fall, not without reason, that the party holding the White House and both houses of Congress cannot govern.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Obama does eke out his victory. Republicans claim that if he does so by “ramming through” the bill with the Congressional reconciliation process, they will have another winning issue for November. On this, they are wrong. Their problem is not just their own hypocritical record on reconciliation, which they embraced gladly to ram through the budget-busting Bush tax cuts. They’d also have to contend with this country’s congenitally short attention span. Once the health care fight is over and out of sight, it will be out of mind to most Americans. We’ve already forgotten about Afghanistan — until the next bloodbath.

The 2010 election will instead be fought about the economy, as most elections are, especially in a recession whose fallout remains severe. But that battle may be even tougher for this president and his party — and not just because of the unemployment numbers. The leadership shortfall we’ve witnessed during Obama’s yearlong health care march — typified by the missed deadlines, the foggy identification of his priorities, the sometimes abrupt shifts in political tone and strategy — won’t go away once the bill does. This weakness will remain unless and until the president himself corrects it.

Those who are unsympathetic or outright hostile to Obama frame his failures as an attempt to impose “socialism” on a conservative nation. The truth is that the Fox News right would believe this about any Democratic president no matter who he was and what his policies were. Obama, who has expanded the war in Afghanistan and proved reluctant to reverse extra-constitutional Bush-Cheney jurisprudence, is a radical mainly to those who believe a conservative Republican senator like Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas is a closet commie...

SNIP

...The problem is not necessarily that Obama is trying to do too much, but that there is no consistent, clear message to unite all that he is trying to do. He has variously argued that health care reform is a moral imperative to protect the uninsured, a long-term fiscal fix for the American economy and an attempt to curb insurers’ abuses. It may be all of these, but between the multitude of motives and the blurriness (until now) of Obama’s own specific must-have provisions, the bill became a mash-up that baffled or defeated those Americans on his side and was easily caricatured as a big-government catastrophe by his adversaries...

SNIP

...This time Obama doesn’t have a year to arrive at his finest hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the clock runs out on Nov. 2.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/opinion/07rich.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[DJ13]

1. "It doesnt matter if its crap, we need a win!"

[Happy Friend]

4. A Shiny, New...

Turd to replace the foul, cloying turd that is our current health care system!

Sign that turd Mr. President!

Really, I do think it's an improvement. The current system is so awful. Of course the insurance companies are utterly useless and it's too bad that they're bribery of politicians makes them unkillable, but someday...

Incremental execution of these criminal corporations would seem to be the best that we can hope for.

Every life saving procedure denied to a patient = Profit, baby!

What an evil system.

I do like Frank Rich though.

[HughMoran]

2. Link so I can read the entire article?

[FourScore]

3. Done!

I don't know what is up with me lately. That's the third time in two days that I forgot the link.

Thanks for the head's up.

[Faygo Kid]

5. Frank is a "must read" every Sunday.

He is sometimes uneven, but always on our side. He's prescient, too: Rarely wrong.

[unblock]

6. even frank rich is echoing the republican frame that his entire presidency is about hcr

the republican plan from the start was to make it as difficult as possible to pass hcr for the sole purpose of denying obama a political victory. part of that strategy involves downplaying everything obama has done and raising the stakes on health care.

now, i certainly think that the democrats in congress should wake up and smell the political coffee and give obama his victory, but i don't think it does any good for a columnist like rich to bolster the republican line that his presidency is toast if he can't get hcr passed.


i'll be disappointed if it doesn't pass (hell, i'm disappointed at what the bill is already) but obama is still a massive improvement over shrub, and his nomination of sotomayor to the supreme court makes up for a whole lot of disappointments in my book (i view supreme court nominations as one of the most significant legacies of any presidency, due to the long-term and large influence they may have.)

[bvar22]

7. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't now.

There is no way to WIN at this point.

Obama has "compromised" so much that the HCR Bill with his face on the label is almost totally what the Republicans wanted, only they haven't had to assume ANY Political Risk.

Individual Mandates + NO Public Option + Tax Increase on the Working Class + BILLIONS in Public Money transfered to Private Pockets + -$500Billion defunding of Medicare = Republican Health Care SCAM.

All the Republicans have to do at THIS point is sit back and say, "Yep. We OPPOSED it"
when America wakes up and realizes that they have been scammed.
The photos of Health Insurance Execs at their new Summer homes in Aspen, or sailing their new yachts won't help, especially after the Wall Street fiasco.

There WILL be a blood bath in 2010/2012 IF this bill passes.
There will probably be a blood bath if this bill doesn't pass.

HOOT...WAT TO GO DEMOCRATS!
YOU COULDN'T HAVE FUCKED IT UP WORSE IF YOU WERE ALL WORKING FOR THE HEALTH INSURANCE CORPS!!!
.
.
.

Oh...wait a minute.

[dflprincess]

9. I'm not so sure Obama has compromised - I think this scam is exactly the bill he wanted

And all the talk about the 3 dimensional chess he was playing? I think he was playing 3 card Monte - and we were the marks.

[bvar22]

10. I soooo agree with you.

It has been perfectly Choreographed & Scripted from the beginning:
Start in the middle, and move to the Right until "they" get everything "they" want.
A very successful Bait & Switch Corporate Marketing Scam....

Can you begin to imagine the UPROAR if the Republicans tried to pass something THIS evil?
It takes a "Centrist" Democrat to do something THIS bad.
Watch Out!
Social Security is NEXT!


"By their works, you will know them."

[Proud Liberal Dem]

8. President Obama is not perfect

........but come the f**k on, Mr. Rich!!!!
:eyes: :banghead:

I don't know if he's ever held elective office or not (I don't believe he has) but I would think that it's kind of hard to govern when the entire opposition party and even some members of your own party are constantly throwing sand in the gears.
It's not like President Obama has had 60 totally compliant, totally loyal members of his own party to help ram his agenda through Congress. What was it that Harry Reid (DEMOCRATIC MAJORITY LEADER) said around the time that Obama was inaugurated? I believe that it was something like, "I don't work for him." I believe that retiring Senator Evan Bayh made a similar comment and announced the formation of a group of Democratic Senators pledging to hold Obama more accountable than they ever seemed to care to hold Bush accountable when he and his Rovian minions were royally f***ing up the country!
It's not like he has had 40-41 members (or even just a few of them) of the opposition party willing to, you know, do their job and help fashion reasonable and good-faith compromises on any of his initiatives. No, they, like their primary cheerleader and figurehead, Rush Limbaugh, have just wanted to make damn sure that he "fails" at everything and that health care reform becomes, as one GOP Senator famously put it, his "waterloo." IMHO they would rather see this country burn to the ground rather than do anything that might potentially be construed as a "victory" for President Obama and the Democratic Party.
It's not like we have a free and fair press in this country that is more interested in educating and informing people about the issues and how government is SUPPOSED to work. No, we have a corporate financed media apparatus in this country that promotes the interests and well-being of the top 1% of elites in this country at the expense of the rest of us and gives THEM and their minions loads of free air time to spew their nonsense to the unwashed masses and do whatever they can to help get Republicans and other regressive politicians elected to government offices- to make damned sure that the status quo (and the "good life" for them) remains safely intact.
I DEFY Rich or anybody else here or elsewhere to name at least one other person who could be doing a better job than President Obama considering all of the s**t he has had to put up with!