Former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein says Obama statement on NYC mosque "appropriate"

[alp227]

On the PBS program Charlie Rose Thursday, during a discussion about the Obama presidency alongside former Clinton chief of staff/current chairman of the Center for American Progress John Podesta, Duberstein stated that he agreed with President Obama regarding Park51, the proposed Islamic cultural center in New York City near Ground Zero but added some reservations:

I think what he said Friday night on religious freedom and what America stands for was absolutely appropriate.

But if I were on the White House staff and I believed John, if he had been on the White House staff, would have cautioned the president nod to add the next sentence, or to go the next day and take it back by starting to get into it as a local issue.

The presidency should be on the high plane of talking about principles of America and of all the American people. He was absolutely right to talk about that. But he should have said, but the placement or the exact location of a mosque is a local decision by New York City and New York State, and that’s where it should reside, rather than confronting the situation, adding to everything else, especially in light of the polling numbers that he has subsequently seen, and then starting to walk back.

It almost looks like the John Kerry he was for it before he was against it. And I think that, again, hurts Barack Obama’s credibility where he needs it so desperately on jobs and the economy.

[LAGC]

1. Sometimes I wonder if Obama really does want a Republican congress come November...

Not just his timings, the things he's said (then backpedaled on, making him look indecisive and phony), but what his closest advisers and spokesmen have said as well, the way they are disenfranchising and demoralizing the left, while stoking up the GOP base in advance of the elections. Maybe it will be easier for him to get re-elected in 2012 if he has the Republicans to blame for everything going wrong in the country. With as bad of shape as the economy is still in, if it deteriorates further, who would want to own that? Far easier to just blame a Republican congress for it and ride the wave of disgust into a second term...

Maybe he has a plan...

[Vicar In A Tutu]

2. In a funny way, with how fickle everything is...

...perhaps it would be better for Democrats in general (below Presidential level) to have a two year break. That's not to say that I feel that is the President's aim, however. But perhaps a small loss followed by the spotlight being shone on Republican obstructionism would be the catalyst for taking it back longer term. I don't know, but a year of Obama playing arch-populist while being blocked at every corner by the lunatic right could play long term dividends. But it would be strictly reliant on Obama and the Democrats finding a more effective way to project their voices. Hard, given the detritus of American media but not impossible.

[smalll]

3. Kinda sounds like Kenny D agrees with Howard Dean --

he acknowledges their First Amendement right to build the thing, but also is not afraid to ask the Cordoba House people to show a little sensitivity. :shrug: