Once GOP stronghold, West veers into Dems' column

This is an interesting piece from the Associated Press that speaks to the complex currents of political change. The same independent spirit that resists taxation also fuels "liberal" causes like reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and legalizing pot. Ultimately, we're all more complex than simple party labels.

It also includes this amusing quote from a libertarian: "The West is the most American part of America."

Once GOP stronghold, West veers into Dems' column - Associated Press, Jan 26, 2013

"The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery"

When I read the title of this Thom Hartmann article I was thinking, "WTF?! What the hell did I do in all of those U.S. history courses?"  Needless to say, ya gotta read this:
The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery

I know that there is somewhat inaccurate, dubious at best, information going around that NRA was a front organization for the KKK, but isn't it astounding to think how much slavery really had a ripple effect in American politics, culture and history?  It's like the Big Bang of America.

Gotta think, folks, and...
“Don’t be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end, amen.” -George Saunders, American author

"The Secret History of Guns"

A fascinating article by Adam Winkler on the history of gun control.  Well worth the read.
The Secret History of Guns
It presents a lot to digest, from Black Panthers to post-Civil War to first gun control legislation to the evolution of the NRA, but definitely points out for all of us the importance of history and understanding the proper perspective of history when it comes to the Constitution and political discourse inextricably linked to it.  Enjoy!

Young's Excellent Adventure in Gun Control Debate, Part 1

This is first of the breakdown regarding the Facebook posts from last month in the wake of the Newtown killings.

Here's the the WH petition that started this:  Support Law Abiding Gun Owners

[Link to the WH petition that I signed:  Immediately Address Gun Control Legislation]

We ask President Obama to support law abiding gun owners in this time of tragedy.

We ask President Obama to stand with law abiding gun owners in this time of tragedy. Guns laws could not have prevented Adam Lanza from killing 27 innocents. The real question is what made this disturbed young man into a murderer of children. Where is the outrage at the violent video games he played? A piece of plastic and steel doesn't have a will Mr. President. Evil is not law abiding, and Adam Lanza stole those guns after failing to buy one legally. it is America's law abiding gun owners who would have died with Victoria Soto and Dawn Hochsprung defending the children with only our bodies on December 14th, because it was already illegal to bring a gun into that school. Please don't pander to the politics Mr. President. A feeding frenzy of new gun legislation is not the answer.

Created: Dec 16, 2012

Having read this petition, I posted the following question:

Young Ho Kim Why do we need more guns when the shooter got the assault weapons from his mother's collection, supposedly a "law abiding gun owner"? Please enlighten me.

I mentioned "more guns" because the petition refers to the fact that it was illegal to bring a gun to the Sandy Hook Elementary.  My friend answered in a way that left me wondering if he even read the petition:

Name Removed I don’t know why you need more guns, but I own them to protect my family, my property and my liberty. It’s a right as designed by the founders of this country. If you want to take an indignant tone then focus that energy on the genocide that happens every day. More than 3000 babies in the womb are killed every day in the USA Over 1 million deaths. More than the top 10 killers combined. But I don’t hear the press calling for the end of abortion. You can't value those lives any less than the 20 that were killed. Selective indignation.  
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151337138501967&set=a.10150432746101967.412210.293920086966&type=1&theater

The image above makes a good comparison of gun deaths vs. other deaths, but I think that is sidetracking the issue at hand which is reducing gun violence.  My friend's entire argument is that if we are to work on preventing deaths, then go after the cause that is killing the most number of people.  Granted, a valid point to make, and aside from the deaths marked "unintentional", I believe there are people and groups advocating to prevent all of these deaths.  But why not reduce gun violence?  Only because it kills the fewest number of people based on the graphic above?

Then his point made a dramatic shift toward abortion because that kills way more than any of the ones listed above.  Wow.  How did my friend end up there?  Apparently, a death is a death, a killing a killing, they are all alike, regardless of the circumstances.  Therefore, only the most number of deaths should really matter, if at all.  This is a typical line of reasoning from most conservatives and libertarians that all situations and incidents are the same--e.g. racism, reverse-discrimination, affirmative action, quotas--all the same.  Aborting an embryo or fetus as an exercise of a woman's reproductive rights is the same as a deranged killer shooting 20 kindergarten-age children.  Wow, really?

I realize that this is arguing without giving equal time to my FB friend, but then right-wingers don't much like the fairness doctrines, either, so...part 2 coming soon.

Armed to the Teeth

USA! USA! USA!
Link to graphic: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/transparency.jpeg

"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

Let's unpack "Guns don't kill people. People kill people.":
People kill people.
People use guns to kill many people.
People use assault weapons to kill many people very quickly.
Should we remove people or guns from these equations?
Or is it just remove bad, evil or mentally ill people?
Sane people can't possibly shoot off their own guns in anger or by accident, right?
One of NRA's solutions is to add more guns to the equation. Real shocker!
Gunnies use distorted facts, statistics and projections off of gun-owner surveys.
Rest of us use simple math and common sense.
Am I missing something about why we need gun control?
Give up your love of guns, America!

Gun Control vs. Abortion? A Facebook Discussion

[Long Post Alert] Following is a discussion I had with a conservative friend on Facebook (heretofore "Name Removed") about gun control which took a real fast turn toward abortion.  Not sure why the person felt the need to compare the recent gun shootings to abortion, but needless to say we will not be having any more discussions via FB.  It's along the lines of other things kill more people than guns, liberals allow murders of the unborn and the liberal media distorts the truth about gun ownership and gun use in self-defense.

My aim now is to try to unpack these comments and see why it is so difficult for people of different political views to come together in this country.  Here's the entire transcript.  I will try to unpack this in sections in future posts (I inserted corrections or additions in [ ] where appropriate).
----------------
Name Removed shared a link. Tuesday at 8:52pm · [12/18/2012]
We ask President Obama to support law abiding gun owners in this time of tragedy. | We the People: Y petitions.whitehouse.gov
We ask President Obama to stand with law abiding gun owners in this time of tragedy. Guns laws could not have prevented Adam Lanza from killing 27 innocents. The real question is what made this disturbed young man into a murderer of children. Where is the outrage at the violent video games he played...
Like · · Unfollow Post · Share 2 people like this.

Young Ho Kim Why do we need more guns when the shooter got the assault weapons from his mother's collection, supposedly a "law abiding gun owner"? Please enlighten me.
Tuesday at 11:43pm via mobile · Like

Name Removed I don’t know why you need more guns, but I own them to protect my family, my property and my liberty. It’s a right as designed by the founders of this country. If you want to take an indignant tone then focus that energy on the genocide that happens every day. More than 3000 babies in the womb are killed every day in the USA Over 1 million deaths. More than the top 10 killers combined. But I don’t hear the press calling for the end of abortion. You can't value those lives any less than the 20 that were killed. Selective indignation. 
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151337138501967&set=a.10150432746101967.412210.293920086966&type=1&theater
 Timeline Photos By: Sniper Company
Yesterday at 2:19am · Like

Name Removed So it's "right" that a woman can terminate a baby in the womb, but I can't own a gun? Crazy upside down liberal ideas.
Yesterday at 2:21am · Like

Young Ho Kim So you, too, are practicing selective indignation. My enlightenment on gun rights should come from the fact that women shouldn't have reproductive rights? Conservatives like you should get off your ideological high-horse and stop your hate. You will always be on the wrong side of progress and history. I guess I should get a gun and a bullet-proof vest to protect myself and my family so more babies can be born, who may or may not get shot at home or school. Wake up! Give up your guns before they're removed from your "cold dead hands" like Chuck Heston declared! Truly sad what the right wing believes... Yesterday at 9:40am via mobile · Like

Name Removed Your enlightenment on “gun control’ comes from the projection that you believe by controlling guns that society will save lives. if the goal is saving lives rather than driving an ideological point about guns, go off and save lives where number matter. In the words of Samuel L. Jackson: "I don't think it's about more gun control. I grew up in the South with guns everywhere and we never shot anyone. This (shooting) is about people who aren't taught the value of life."

 Besides there are practical issues that you may not be aware of. There are more than half a billion firearms in private hands in the US, there is no controlling that. What is needed [is] to teach the value of human life. And that of course starts in the home and support by the media and the ideology of the population. If the population thinks that killing babies in the womb is ok, then that makes a big statement of the value of human life.

 Funny - what about my statement said "hate" – it shows respect for human life - all life including the unborn. Women terminate their babies because of ten months of incontinent [sic] truth. Ten months for future life of a human. I just don’t understand it. Look your own child in the eye and tell me about reproductive rights.

 Just because I own guns does not mean that I am lawless with their use. Fear not for your safety from me, or other gun owners for they will be the first to protect you. There are countless cases of lawfully “packing” gun owners coming to the aid. Law enforcement in general does not prevent crimes, they just count bodies and pick up the pieces. they can not be everywhere at all time. the average response time from a 911 call is over 5 minutes in [an] urban area and much greater in suburban and rural areas. If you are not prepared to protect you and your family from the lawless then you’re a victim and perhaps a survivor if you [are] lucky. You buy insurance no doubt, you hope you never need to use it, but you buy never the less, or in the case of Washington state you are compelled to buy auto insurance, [or] in the national scale health insurance.

 Of course if you own a gun, you should take precautions about the safe storage and access. You should seek training on the use and operation. And if there is someone in you[r] home that is not mentally stable, you should take care that they don’t gain access to your firearms. It comes down to personal responsib[ility] for one['s] actions including the what one owns. Cars and pools kill more people and children every year, but there are loose regulations about ownership and operations.

 If you are not familiar with firearms I invite you to join me at the range one afternoon for a primer on the issue.
Yesterday at 10:43am · Like · 1 

Name Removed https://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#!/photo.php?fbid=473028909422139&set=a.119506304774403.17273.114364638621903&type=1&theater
 Timeline Photos Samuel L Jackson said this today about the Sandy Hook shooting: “I don’t think i...
See More By: ForAmerica
Yesterday at 10:52am · Like · 1

Young Ho Kim No thanks on a gun primer, Name Removed. Your arguments don't make sense. Nancy Lanza could not stop her son as a gun owner. On one hand you say there are too many guns in this country to control, but you support more people to own guns; i.e. petition link you posted.

 Do you really think this country values life less than say China? I believe they have more abortions and child neglect than gun violence; same could be said for South Korea. Fact is that sensible gun control laws work in the world; why not here? Do we attribute that to the misinterpretation of the 2nd amendment and American exceptionalism?

 How many times have you had to protect yourself and family with a firearm? How is anyone's life diminished by NOT owning a gun? This is what I meant by "Enlighten me." I have yet to see a good argument FOR having an assault weapon, let alone a revolver, in a home.
Yesterday at 1:39pm via mobile · Like

Name Removed I am sure you meant to say my arguments don’t make sense to you, or the implication is that you are saying my logic is fundamentally flawed. In the future refrain from commenting on my post if you [are] going to be closed minded. For [my] part I cannot understand why you condone, support and rationalize the killing of 1.3 million children in the USA under the selfish premise of “reproductive rights". If your concern was about children you can not be engaged about the death of 20 children in Newtown while ignoring the larger issue of child genocide by cervical dilation and suction.
16 hours ago · Like

Young Ho Kim I will gladly refrain from commenting on your posts in the future because you are closed-minded. My concern is for children AND adults who will continue to be shot and killed due to uncontrolled gun sales and ownership in the USA, which can be avoided.

 I pray to God that you will not suffer any tragedy from the guns that you own. I wonder if you are or have been taking serious action against abortions since you sound so passionate about it.
about a minute ago via mobile · Edited · Like

The Compromiser

BA posted what seems like ages ago, "Disappointed with Obama?" back in December 2009.  I must say that I am disappointed.  Governing IS different, much, much different than campaigning; that much is clear for the Administration.  But all the talk of being bipartisan and bringing the two parties together took his focus away from doing what is good for the country, or rather, doing what HE believes in.

Then again, what does Obama believe in?  Does he not believe in universal healthcare that is not a silly auto insurance version of mandatory purchase from a private insurer?  Does he not believe in regulating the excesses of capitalism?  Does he not believe in a tax code that is progressive and pushing it through Congress?  Does he believe in pushing his agenda through Congress?  He gave too much credit to the Democratic and Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, which led to the 2010 losses in the House.  He did not take full advantage of the Democratic control nor manage to fight off the obstructionist Repub strategy.  Was he unable or unwilling or something else?

Meanwhile, his jobs bill sits at a time when the economy added only 80,000 job in October and the longtime unemployed are starting to lose their benefits.  Are we seriously looking at a Carter "malaise" once again?  I know, Obama didn't create the economic crisis, but he definitely took his left wing base for granted.  But this ain't 1980 all over again, either.  See my Republican presidential field post...

It is said that politics is the art of compromise.  Is it really, and to this extent when the nation needs true leadership?  I cannot help the feeling of disappointment and opportunties lost.  Whither America?

Republicans who could win but GOP won't nominate

Let's face it, folks.  The GOP field is a sorry lot, and I'm not saying that just because I support the Democrats.  James Carville wrote similar sentiments on CNN comparing the 2012 lot to the 1980 lot (I bet he had input from his GOP wife), and the whole much-ado-about-nothing for Chris Christie indicates the discontent among the conservative and the moderate Repubs.

From Mitt "The Flipflopping Mormon" Romney to Rick "Oops" Perry to Herman "Some of My Best Friends are Women who I've Never Harassed" Cain, the road to the nomination has been all about appeasing the far right Tea Party.  Simply put, there are worthy Republican leaders who probably could actually have a shot at Barack "The Compromiser" Obama, but absolutely zero chance at surviving the nomination process.

It's fairly easy to think of two:  Colin Powell and Rudy Giuliani.  I, for one, would seriously consider voting for Powell.  He is the most Reagan-esque candidate having the most centrist, moderate and independent appeal, and military credentials like Eisenhower.  As for Giuliani, the recent tributes and re-tellings of the 9/11 10-year anniversary reminded me once again how his leadership skills were critical in the aftermath of the Twin Tower collapse, the obvious opportunities to earn political clout notwithstanding.

It's also obvious that it's too late in the campaign season to realistically consider a better GOP candidate entering the race for Iowa and New Hampshire.  What a disappointing presidential campaign when compared to 2008.  Am I right, folks?

The Faces and Names of the Price of Freedom

Egypt Remembers

They're Baaack! 2012 Presidential Elections, of course.

What goes around comes around, and here we go again.  The 2012 presidential election season has already started.  And we now have a blog to record our comments for posterity.

So, are ya ready for some football...I mean...Political Discourse?!  Looking forward to your contributions.

The Egyptian Revolution

Revolution will be and has been televised!  Congratulations and Glory to the People of Egypt!!!  Remember the date for the history lessons:  February 11, 2011.  The people of the world will refer to it as "2/11", and what ironic juxtaposition and extreme ends of the spectrum it is as it invokes inevitable connotations and reference to 9/11, and on so many levels!

The 18-day protest in Cairo's Tahrir "Liberation" Square has been nothing short of the most incredible history-making display of a people's movement that forced a monumental change in an Arab nation.  "People united can never be defeated!"  It had all the ups and downs, twists and turns of the newest and state-of-the-art thrill ride.  Such liberation, freedom, hope and opportunity for the future of Egypt.  And o so many questions, speculations, and topics to debate, to analyze and to discuss, so many things to say and to express as a mere observer of current events and world history.  It cannot be overstated that the Arab world has rarely seen this type of protests for freedom and have succeeded.

I want to share in the celebration and the exuberance of the Egyptian people, but history does teach us to be cautious and humble observers, as all revolutions have been followed by hardships, shattered dreams and even cruelty.  The French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, the Russian Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, Tienanmen Square, the 2009 democratic protest in Tehran.  Even the American Revolution could not avoid a war to gain independence for the Thirteen Colonies.  One had to wonder if Tahrir might become another Tienanmen (interesting to note that the word "Tahrir" keeps getting flagged by the Blogger editor as a misspelled word as it has not yet entered our common vernacular but that will change quite soon).  And let us not forget that there were people who gave their lives and endured bodily harm in the early days of this revolution to bring this change to fruition.

All indications are that this was a true people's uprising in Egypt, not some extremist or subversive group, that demanded Hosni Mubarak to resign, but what now?  Will Egypt become a democratic republic after nearly 60 years of dictatorship by military leaders?  It is reassuring that the military has publicly stated its support for a lawful transition of power and for keeping the peace treaty with Israel.  One can only hope to watch and pray for  peaceful and non-violent events toward the building of a new democratic political infrastructure and governance. The saga continues...and next stop, Algeria!?

Tunisia Gloria! Onward to Egypt...

Are we witnessing the dawning of a new age of democracy in the Arab-Muslim world, or will this wave of protest tip the scales and hand the balance of power to the radical Islamic fundamentalist movement?

The land of Hannibal and its people who fought three glorious wars against the Romans entered the limelight of the world stage!  Glory to Tunisia that ushered in reform and a new government by the people protesting in the streets and sacrificing themselves in order to break free from 50 years of dictatorial rule.  I must confess my ignorance to this fact.  While they filmed "The Life of Brian", the Tunisian people were suffering under oppression.  For a pop-culture nut like me, that puts things into perspective the fat and comfortable lives we enjoy in America.

And to think that it all began because of a desperate street vendor who resorted to self-immolation after he was stripped of his livelihood and dignity by the police state.  To refer to his act as a "spark" would be an insult and a defamation of the man whose name I don't even know, not just a terrible and inappropriate pun.  It appears now that this Tunisian Revolution may go down in history as the touchstone of Arab democratic revolt in the 21st century, in the same vein as the fall of the Berlin Wall brought down the Soviet Union and the Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe in the waning years of the 20th.  This case is even more remarkable because there is almost no democratic tradition in the Arab world.

Who would have even thought that this type of protest would spread 11 days later to Egypt?  Is there any doubt that there are more demonstrations and protests to come?

‘‘Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act’’

[Link to the pdf of the bill itself:  Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act]

Gotta love the title of the bill, don't ya?  You know, I'm not a fan of the enacted health care reform law since I believe in true socialized medicine, as in the single-payer universal health care.  That's why it is even more annoying that the Repubs continue to slam "Obamacare" as socialism.  Really?  Socialism?  Pardon the digression, but I still don't get how some of the Mad Hatter Tea Party-ers equate Obama to Hitler.  Is it the Death Panel thing again?

Anyway, back to the point, what is the Republican alternative to repealing health care reform?  Status quo?  They do keep saying, "Let's scrap it and start over."  Start over with what?  What's your proposal or even an idea?  I haven't heard it.  Does it cover more Americans than the current law?  I don't think so.  Repubs would be happy to have people who "choose" not to have any health care coverage.  What is it, then?  Where is it?

House GOP should stop kowtowing to the Mad Hatters and get back to business at hand.  Get people jobs and back to work.  Plenty of new GOP congresspeople got new jobs.  It's time to return the favor to the people who elected them into office.  2012 is not that far away, and the electorate certainly has a very itchy voting finger.

Trickle-down? Really?

Why do the Repubs still back this "tax cuts for the rich few" notion? It is clearly bad for deficit and does nothing for the economy. Still hanging on to the Trickle-down Economics of the Reagan Years? Come on...

Tax Bill to add $857 Billion to Debt

by CalculatedRisk on 12/09/2010 11:10:00 PM

From Bloomberg: Senate Tax-Cut Extension Plan Would Add $857 Billion to Debt

The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, which estimates the revenue effects of tax legislation, said the provisions would cost the government $801.3 billion in forgone revenue over 10 years. Extending unemployment benefits for 13 months, another feature of the package, would cost $56 billion, the Obama administration has said.

It is important to remember the Joint Committee on Taxation assumed all the provisions will end as scheduled; the payroll tax cut after one year, and the other tax cuts after two years. That seems very unlikely, so the actual cost will be much much higher. As an example, if the tax cut for high income earners stays in place for the next decade that will add $700 billion alone to the debt!

Also, the vast majority of the impact is from extending the Bush tax cuts.

[AMoMaI] Disappointed with Obama?

BA et al.:

Disappointed with Obama? Certainly not! He's been exactly what I said he would be, only less effective at it. His definition of "bipartisan" is - as I stated long, long ago - "Republicans should join us in what we're trying to do, or they should get out of the way and let us steamroll them." I must say, though, I didn't know he'd have as little stomach for the steamrolling as he turns out to have had.

In 1991 I looked closely at Bill Clinton to see if he would be a viable centrist candidate alternative to George H. W. Bush. Suffice it to say that I did not look long before I was determined to do all I could to keep him out of the White House. I would have rather said, "I was wrong" than feel vindicated after two terms, but he was exactly the President I thought he would be only worse.

In 2006 I looked closely at Obama to see if he would be a viable centrist candidate alternative to what the GOP might put up. I read his first book and loved it. I started to read his second book and hated it. It's not the Audacity of Hope...it's just Audacity, and his administration has reflected it. Not merely such wasted opportunity to move forward, we have moved backward in our politics and in our safety in the world. I think if I were invited to the White House for another Beer Summit (c'mon, are we serious?!), I would enjoy greatly dialoging with the President and First Lady. I think my kids would enjoy playing with their kids. I am so proud of our country for breaking the color barrier in the White House (though this is NOT the same thing as race not being an issue in the election, with so many more people voting FOR Obama because of his race than voted AGAINST him because of his race, neither one being a legitimate reason to cast a vote). And I do not toss out the same "He's not MY President" stuff that so many Bush-haters spewed about GWB. Obama is my President; I just didn't vote for him, and I wish he had not won. He's done some good things, but more often than not I range from displeased to really upset in response to his rule. It is not simply that he is pursuing an agenda that drives me nuts - granted, I know it's one that you guys like muchly - but he is doing it so poorly and messing up so many things domestically and internationally in the process.

I think Brian's Jimmy Carter allusion may be a good one. Obama apologists blamed Obama's early missteps on "the right wing" who wanted nothing but for him to fail. At this point, still so early in his term, it's tough even for the apologists to defend him. The key to it all for me remains what has bothered me for so long: He is air, "sizzle without the steak" as David Gurgen wrote nearly two decades ago in the NYT magazine about White House communications, empty rhetoric that more and more people are coming to realize they cannot believe because there is nothing behind the speech but the speech. As BA's piece says, as soon as controversy arises he makes like Dennis Miller on SNL's Weekend Update and says, "IIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMOUTTAHERE!!!" But that's how it's been since campaign days. Friends with everyone without discretion, and shame on someone for impugning the integrity of his friends, until a friend gets inconvenient and then he gets thrown under the bus. Even Grandma got thrown under the bus.

Forgive the rant...haven't had much opportunity to do so. Thanks, BA, for the invitation. Now, have at it, guys!

Merry Christmas to all. May it be a blessed holiday for your families, and as Tiny Tim said, "Tip-toe..." No, wait, wrong one. "God bless us, everyone."

-BRM

RE: [U.S. Politics and History - AMoMaI] Disappointed With Obama?

Email response from MLB...

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Michael Busick <misterb_46@hotmail.com>
Sent: Mon, December 21, 2009 3:05:48 PM


I'm not disappointed at all, actually.

Given the mess he's only begun to clean up (and I agree with him when he said it's the biggest mess left for a new president to deal with since FDR took office in 1933)

Just look at how Dubya spent his first 11 months. How many days were spent on vacation? What did he even try to do to help the average American? And he was left with a much smaller mess than Obama. :)

Obama's working his skinny behind off and trying to get things done despite obstructionist, contrarian Republicans and cowardly Democrats (Pelosi and Reid included). He's starting out more like Lincoln than he wanted to, unfortunately.

No way do I regret voting for him. I'll end with a passage I left on a friend's blog:

He's a veggie burger in a steakhouse, a Spock on a ship full of Kirks and a Rubik's Cube in a store of Chinese finger puzzles. And I couldn't be happier about it.

And I agreed with another article on HuffPost that said that Republicans don't want to govern, they just want to criticize. All I'm seeing from them is more of the same (which is how we got here in the first place). Obama should make up things to approve just to see how far FOX News and the GOP will go. The GOP is already twisting themselves in bunches over Medicare's role in the new health-care plan. They can't decide whether to protest its expansion or its existence.

Democrats need to get behind him sooner rather than later or the ones up for re-election in 2010 will find themselves without Congressional health care or their current high-paying jobs.

Disappointed With Obama?

Well, after a long hiatus - I'd like to finally come clean and say that I'm Disappointed in the Obama Administration. Drew Westen captured my feeling succinctly in the Huffington Post, today. Please let me know what you all think? Is is too early to label the Obama Administration a failure? Is anyone sorry that they voted for him? Is it too late for this President to avoid being the Ghost of Jimmy Carter and Christmas past?

Go a head, Brian M. and say, "I told you so." And Young and Mike, looks like you guys were right about Obama's lack of executive experience - - Perhaps, it has made a difference...

Drew Westen: Psychologist and neuroscientist; Emory University Professor

Posted: December 20, 2009 09:34 PM

"As the president's job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it's time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those "pesky leftists" -- those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

Leadership, Obama Style

Consider the president's leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there's a conflict, because if there's a conflict, he doesn't want to be anywhere near it.

Health care is a paradigm case. When the president went to speak to the Democrats last week on Capitol Hill, he exhorted them to pass the bill. According to reports, though, he didn't mention the two issues in the way of doing that, the efforts of Senators like Ben Nelson to use this as an opportunity to turn back the clock on abortion by 25 years, and the efforts of conservative and industry-owned Democrats to eliminate any competition for the insurance companies that pay their campaign bills. He simply ignored both controversies and exhorted.

Leadership means heading into the eye of the storm and bringing the vessel of state home safely, not going as far inland as you can because it's uncomfortable on the high seas. This president has a particular aversion to battling back gusting winds from his starboard side (the right, for the nautically challenged) and tends to give in to them. He just can't tolerate conflict, and the result is that he refuses to lead.

We have seen the same pattern of pretty speeches followed by empty exhortations on issue after issue. The president has, on more than one occasion, gone to Wall Street or called in its titans (who have often just ignored him and failed to show up) to exhort them to be nice to the people they're foreclosing at record rates, yet he has done virtually nothing for those people. His key program for preventing foreclosures is helping 4 percent of those "lucky" enough to get into it, not the 75 percent he promised, and many of the others are having their homes auctioned out from right under them because of some provisions in the fine print. One in four homeowners is under water and one in six is in danger of foreclosure. Why we're giving money to banks instead of two-year loans -- using the model of student loans -- to homeowners to pay their mortgages (on which they don't have to pay interest or principal for two years, while requiring their banks to renegotiate their interest rates in return for saving the banks from "toxic assets") is something the average person doesn't understand. And frankly, I don't understand it, either. I thought I voted Democratic in the last election.

Same with the credit card companies. Great speech about the fine print. Then the rates tripled.

The president has exhorted the banks, who are getting zero-interest money, to give more of it to small businesses. But they have no incentives to do that. There are too many high-yield, reasonably low risk investments to make with zero-interest federal loans. I wouldn't mind a few billion to play around with right now myself, and I can't say I'd start with some guy who wants to start his own heating and air company, or an existing small business owner who is hanging on by his fingernails in tough economic times. I'd put my money in something like emerging markets, or maybe Canada. (Have you noticed how well Canadian equities are doing lately?) Or perhaps Chinese wind turbines. (Oh, we're investing there already with stimulus funds.)

The time for exhortation is over. FDR didn't exhort robber barons to stem the redistribution of wealth from working Americans to the upper 1 percent, and neither did his fifth cousin Teddy. Both men told the most powerful men in the United States that they weren't going to rip off the American people any more, and they backed up their words with actions. Teddy Roosevelt was clear that capital gains taxes should be high relative to income taxes because we should reward work, not "gambling in stocks." This President just doesn't have the stomach to make anyone do anything they don't want to do (except women to have unwanted babies because they can't afford an abortion or live in a red state and don't have an employer who offers insurance), and his advisors are enabling his most troubling character flaw, his conflict-avoidance.

Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn't stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can't stand them because I realize he doesn't mean what he says -- or if he does, he just doesn't have the fire in his belly to follow through. He can't seem to muster the passion to fight for any of what he believes in, whatever that is. He'd make a great queen -- his ceremonial addresses are magnificent -- but he prefers to fly Air Force One at 60,000 feet and "stay above the fray."

It's the job of the president to be in the fray. It's his job to lead us out of it, not to run from it. It's his job to make the tough decisions and draw lines in the sand. But Obama really doesn't seem to want to get involved in the contentious decisions. They're so, you know, contentious. He wants us all to get along. Better to leave the fights to the Democrats in Congress since they're so good at them. He's like an amateur boxer who got a coupon for a half day of training with Angelo Dundee after being inspired by the tapes of Mohammed Ali. He got "float like a butterfly" in the morning but never made it to "sting like a bee."

Do you think Americans ought to have one choice of health insurance plans the insurance companies don't control, or don't you? I don't want to hear that it would sort of, kind of, maybe be your preference, all other things being equal. Do you think we ought to use health care as a Trojan Horse for right-wing abortion policies? Say something, for God's sake.

He doesn't need a chief of staff. He needs someone to shake him until he feels something strongly enough not just to talk about it but to act. He's increasingly appearing to the public, and particularly to swing voters, like Dukakis without the administrative skill. And although he is likely to squeak by with a personal victory in 2012 if the economy improves by then, he may well do so with a Republican Congress. But then I suppose he'll get the bipartisanship he always wanted.

No Vision, No Message

The second problem relates to the first. The president just doesn't want to enunciate a progressive vision of where this country should be heading in the 21st century, particularly a progressive vision of government and its relation to business. He doesn't want to ruffle what he believes to be the feathers of the American people, to offer them a coherent, emotionally resonant, values-driven message -- starting with an alternative to Ronald Reagan's message that government is the problem and not the solution -- and to see if they might actually follow him.

He doesn't want to talk about social issues, even though they predictably have gotten in the way of health care reform and will do the same on one issue after another. Abortion? You don't advance a progressive position by giving a center-right speech at Notre Dame that emphasizes cutting back on the number of abortions without mentioning that sex education and birth control might be useful means to that end, mumbling something about a conscience clause that suggests that pharmacists don't have to fill birth control prescriptions if it offends their sensibilities, and allowing states to use health care reform to set back the rights of women and couples to decide when to start their families based on somebody else's faith. If you believe that freedom includes the freedom to decide when you will or won't have a child, say it, say it with moral conviction, and follow it up with action. Perhaps something as simple as this: "I won't sign a health bill into law that forces women and couples to have a child they did not intend and are not ready to parent because of the dictates of someone else's faith or conscience." You know what? A message of that sort wins by 25 points nationally, and you can speak it in Southern and win with evangelical Christians in the deep south if you speak to them honestly in the language of faith. That shouldn't be hard for a president who is a religious Christian.

Gays? Virtually all Americans are for repealing don't ask/don't tell (except for conservatives who haven't yet come to terms with their own homosexuality -- but don't tell them that, or at least don't ask). This one's a no-brainer. Tell Congress you want a bill on your desk by January 1, and announce that you have serious questions about the constitutionality of the current policy and won't enforce it until your Justice Department has had time to study it. Don't keep firing gay Arabic interpreters. But that would require not just giving the pretty speech on how we're all equal in the eyes of God and we should all be equal in the eyes of the law (a phrase he might want to try sometime). It would require actually doing something that might anger a small percentage of the population on the right, and that's just too hard for this president to do. It's one thing to acknowledge and respect the positions of people who hold different points of view. It's another to capitulate to them.

Immigration? Joe Wilson yells, "You lie." So instead of acting like a man and going after Wilson on the spot (the man just attacked him in front of the entire nation in a joint session of Congress), he accepts his apology the next day, and a day later rewards Wilson for his incivility and bigotry by tightening the rules so that illegal immigrants can't even buy insurance themselves on the health care exchange the Democrats are creating sometime between 2013 and 2025 (depending on how many seats they lose in the meantime, and hence how long, if ever, it takes for the exchange to get set up).

Good policy? No. Not only is it inhumane -- can you imagine being really sick or in terrible pain but being too afraid even to go to a clinic because you might be deported? -- but it's a public health hazard for sick people not to get care and spread their illnesses, a drain on American taxpayers as illegal immigrants who finally have no choice but to find their way, when they're incredibly ill, to emergency rooms or public clinics, and a despicable policy toward their children, many of whom are American citizens, but who in either case shouldn't have to be sick, in pain, and without preventive care as their bodies and minds are developing, no matter where their parents come from.

Is it good politics? No. During the election I tested messages on just this issue, and a strong progressive message beat the most convincing anti-immigrant message we could throw at it by 10 points. Two weeks ago, I tested messages on just this issue as it applied to health care, and that margin had doubled.

If you just talk sensibly with Americans, they are sensible people. But ask them one-dimensional polling questions like, "Do you think illegal immigrants should get health care?" and you'll entirely miss the art of the possible.

Jobs? Watch for a $25 billion plan that makes good political theatre and that every economist I know says will move the unemployment rate from 10.0 percent to 9.95 percent. Not enough to save 30 seats in November. And not enough to save a generation of families from financial ruin and lower education, higher unemployment, and poorer health for the rest of their -- and their children's -- lives.

The problem with the president's strategic team is that they don't understand the difference between compromising on policy and compromising on core values. When it comes to policies, listen all you want to the Stones: "You can't always get what you want" (although it would be nice if the administration tried sometime). But on issues of principle -- like allowing regressive abortion amendments to be tacked onto a health care reform bill -- get some stones. Make your case to the American people, make it evocatively, and draw the line in the sand. That's how you earn people's respect. That's the only thing that will bring Independents back.

And that's where the problem of message comes in. This White House has no coherent message on anything. The message on health care reform changed even more frequently than the interest rates on credit cards last Spring, and turned a 70-30 winning issue into its current 30-50 status with the public. Last week on the Sunday news shows, I remember watching in disbelief as Larry Summers smugly told the 15 million Americans out of work that the recession was definitively over and that all economists agree. Then Christina Romer, another of the President's chief economic advisors, announced on the next show that the recession is definitely not over.

That's simply inexcusable. The least two members of the economic team can do before they fan out on the Sunday morning shows is to agree on whether we're in a recession, how it relates to joblessness, and how to talk about it sensitively without seeming out of touch. That's the job of the White House messaging team, which has been AWOL since at least the start of the health care battle last Spring.

It's the same problem we've seen with messaging the deficit. Are deficits good -- we're supposed to deficit spend our way out of a severe recession, right? -- or bad -- they're a drag on the economy and stealing from the next generation. So which are they? How about telling the American people, at the very least, when they're good and when they're bad, not flipping back and forth in the same sentence between deficit spending and deficit reduction.

To be honest, I don't know what the president believes on anything, and I'm not alone among American voters. He introduced his recent job summit by saying that even in these times, the role of government should be limited. Really? That was a nicely nuanced reinforcement of the ideology of limited, ineffective government promulgated by Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Unfortunately, it runs against all the available data and everything Democrats have stood for since FDR.

Abortion? Who knows. Gays? I suspect intellectually he believes in equal rights but deep down he thinks they're icky. Something is sure holding him back from doing the obvious. Immigrants? He probably has an opinion, but he's not going to waste political capital on them; he sold them out in 15 seconds on health care. Foreclosures? Nice speeches, and I'm sure it really concerns him when he hears the stories of families firsthand. But not enough to divert the cash from the lenders to the borrowers. And the problem is, the average American knows it. Job creation? Would be nice, and I presume he believes that people who want to work ought to be able to work. But when 700,000 people were losing their jobs a month in his first few months of office and over millions have lost their jobs on his watch (a process, of course, initiated by his predecessor, whose name, to my knowledge, he has not uttered since entering office), three letters should have come to mind: W - P - A. President Roosevelt had no legs to stand on, but he sure had spine.

The Politics of the Lowest Common Denominator

And capping off all of these aspects of the president's leadership style is his preference for the lowest common denominator. That means you don't really have to fight, you don't have to take anybody on, you don't take any risks. You just find what the public is so upset about that even the Republicans would stipulate to it if forced to (e.g., that excluding people from health care because they have "pre-existing conditions" is something we can't continue to tolerate) and build it into whatever plan the special interests can hammer out around it.

Unfortunately, what Democrats just can't seem to understand is that the politics of the lowest common denominator is always a losing politics. It sends a meta-message that you're weak -- nothing more, nothing less -- and that's the cross the Democrats have had to bear since they "lost China" 60 years ago. And in fact, it is weak.

Want health care reform? Let Congress work it out, and whatever comes out, call it a victory. It's telling that when the Senate triumphantly announced that it had the 60 votes for cloture on Friday, insurance stocks hit a 52-year peak.

Energy? Okay, if you don't really want to mess with the oil and coal industries, let the caps slip higher and higher and industry will cut pollution around the edges. It won't really solve the problem, but it's the golden mean between the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do, which is the essence of Obampromise. It also hamstrings you in Copenhagen, but oh well, they could use a little global warming there this time of year anyway. Have you noticed it's cold as hell over there?

Financial regulation? The president's all for the good stuff: regulating derivatives and other fancy financial products no one but the people making bundles off of them who crashed the economy (and now run it) understand. Tell bankers the days of wine and roses are over. But if we have to have half-reform so Goldman Sachs is willing to keep sending its best and brightest through the revolving door at Treasury, that's okay; the Dow is up. So jobs are bleak and the average American is enraged that Wall Street had a bumper year -- with record bonuses -- as they're losing their homes. But you know the old adage about a half a loaf.

That's in fact what the health care debate is over. We shouldn't have had to settle for half a loaf. If the president had simply placed appropriate blame on the health insurance industry for its pre-existing conditions, it's cutting off care for breast cancer victims in the middle of treatment, and its doubling our premiums and co-pays during the Bush years, he would have harnessed populist anger and pushed this bill through six months ago, and it would have looked like the change we were told to believe in. But if you cut backroom deals with every special interest who is part of the problem and offer the American people no coherent message while the other side is messaging straight out of the messaging memo written by Frank Luntz ("government takeover," "a bureaucrat between you and your doctor"), you can expect half a loaf. And the other half will be paid for by middle class taxpayers, as in the Senate bill, which includes provisions like taxing good middle class tax plans like PPOs, which will disappear as soon as insurance companies and big businesses have the excuse of the missing tax break. Remind me, when we've just had the largest transfer of wealth to the upper 1 percent of the country from working and middle class Americans in a century, why it would be such a terrible thing instead, as in the House bill, to ask people who make over a million dollars a year to pony up for the health care of their (and their friends') housekeepers, instead of taking away health care plans union workers traded for salary increases?

The president's biggest success has been on the international stage: He's not George W. Bush, and he's eloquent to boot. He's done a great deal with that eloquence to speak to Muslims around the world and to make clear to others in the international community that America is back -- mostly. But that international community is just starting to learn that his eloquence doesn't always have much behind it.

Am I being too hard on the president? He's certainly done many good things. But it would be hard to name a single thing President Obama has done domestically that any other Democrat wouldn't have done if he or she were president following George W. Bush (e.g., signing the children's health insurance bill that Congress is about to gut to pay for worse care for kids under the health insurance exchange, if it ever happens), and there's a lot he hasn't done that every other Democrat who ran for president would have done.

Obama, like so many Democrats in Congress, has fallen prey to the conventional Democratic strategic wisdom: that the way to win the center is to tack to the center.

But it doesn't work that way.

You want to win the center? Emanate strength. Emanate conviction. Lead like you know where you're going (and hopefully know what you're talking about).

People in the center will follow if you speak to their values, address their ambivalence (because by definition, on a wide range of issues, they're torn between the right and left), and act on what you believe. FDR did it. LBJ did it. Reagan did it. Even George W. Bush did it, although I wish he hadn't.

But you have to believe something.

I don't honestly know what this president believes. But I believe if he doesn't figure it out soon, start enunciating it, and start fighting for it, he's not only going to give American families hungry for security a series of half-loaves where they could have had full ones, but he's going to set back the Democratic Party and the progressive movement by decades, because the average American is coming to believe that what they're seeing right now is "liberalism," and they don't like what they see. I don't, either.

What's they're seeing is weakness, waffling, and wandering through the wilderness without an ideological compass. That's a recipe for going nowhere fast -- but getting there by November."

Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.

Steele's Take on Obama Health Care Speech

Wow, socialist power grab, you say? What the hell? I better get off my butt and donate to the RNC! "Are you now or have you ever been a socialist, President Obama?" You can't trust an Obama Democrat as far as you can throw one, am I right, people?

Seriously, is this what conservatives are truly worried about, a socialist power grab? How does health care reform benefit the gov't and elitist liberals by providing insurance for those who don't have it? Let's see...The public option could allow more people to get lower-cost health insurance so that insurance company profits could go down, which in turn could mean dwindling political donations and lobbyist monies to the RNC and others who are pro-insurance companies...Damn it, we better stop them now!

Steele's Response to Obama Speech via HuffPo

Fwd: The False Hope of Bipartisanship - BRM

Apologies to BRM as the article below (and others which I will post here shortly) had been stuck in our Google Groups site since Feb. Doh! And for some reason, I did not have email forwarded from that site, so I never received it. Since we don't really check that site, please post to our blog, not that we're "crazy go nuts" blogging all the time. ;-) Appreciate your support.

Thanks, BRM, for the article. I think this is quite telling and topical even months later, given the current health care debate, distortion and disinformation. More comments to come after reading the article more thoroughly.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Brian Menard" <brian_men...@hotmail.com>
Date: Feb 16, 11:05 am
Subject: The False Hope of Bipartisanship
To: AMoMaI Group

Friends:

Great piece by political scientiest Alan Abramowitz, from Larry
Sabato's Crystal Ball (see Sabato's Crystal Ball - Vol. VII, Iss. 6 -
SENATE 2010 UPDATE - @ Larry J. Sabato
<goodpolit...@virginia.edu<mailto:goodpolit...@virginia.edu>>).

In it, a not-by-any-measure-conservative academic argues effectively the point that is the source of great frustration with President Obama for conservatives like me. I disagree soundly - though not surprisingly - with Abramowitz's suggestion that we stop pretending to be bipartisan and just push the socialist agenda. I agree soundly, though, that President Obama is trying to push two incompatible rhetorical lines. To put my own priority in place of Abramowitz's preference for the abandonment of bipartisanship, I echo his essential point that you can't claim you want bipartisanship without being willing to make concessions to bipartisanship. I wrote an unpublished op-ed (after Senator Obama announced formally his candidacy on the steps of the Springfield Capitol two years ago) that argued his bipartisan/postpartisan appeal essentially said, "Hey, all you Republicans, if you would just join our left-wing socialist agenda and get out of the way, we could work together to do great things for the country." While I had the audacity to hope the new administration would prioritize its rhetoric pushing bipartisanship over its rhetoric pushing leftist policies, President Obama seems to dismiss the moderates who helped elect him and conservatives like me who didn't but nonetheless want to work with him on a truly bipartisan basis. As Newt Gingrich stated a couple weeks ago on ABC's "This Week", you can't bake the cake yourself and then write the other side's name in the frosting on top to call it a bipartisan effort. "We won" keeps getting shoved in the face of such folks like a scoop of misplaced doggie-doo to remind people that - contrary to claims of messianic Barack disciples - we should not repeat the mistake they made in electing someone who promised to change the tone of Washington. I argued during the campaing that McCain was the real candidate for changing how things are done in Washington. Obama made a much better case, though, disingenuous as it was. After the election I argued that President-Elect Obama had a special opportunity to make real change, not just partisan policy change, and that doing so would elevate him from being another partisan President to being a real statesman and leader. He has gone the wrong direction in this regard, and he is killing fast the good will that people like me have maintained. I will hold on to hope. Increasingly, though, whether because the President is too naïve/weak/insecure to lead the left-wing leadership of Congress or because his rhetoric of bipartisanship/postpartisanship is truly meaningless, what I see is just audacity without much cause for hope in the long run.

-BRM
---------------------------------------------------------------------------­------------------------
The False Hope of Bipartisanship
[from Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball: see Sabato's Crystal Ball - Vol.
VII, Iss. 6 - SENATE 2010 UPDATE - @ Larry J. Sabato
<goodpolit...@virginia.edu<mailto:goodpolit...@virginia.edu>>]

Alan Abramowitz

It's not a matter of "if." It's a matter of "when." As in, when will all of the feel-good rhetoric about Democrats and Republicans joining hands to solve the nation's problems come to an end and open partisan warfare resume in Washington? In fact, that time may already be here. Despite Barack Obama's efforts to reach out to Republican leaders and conservative intellectuals since his election and his willingness to modify his economic stimulus package to accommodate Republicans' desire for smaller spending increases and larger tax cuts, the President isn't getting much love from the other side of the aisle.

One day after Mr. Obama ventured to Capitol Hill to urge Republican lawmakers to support his $819 billion stimulus package, House Republicans voted 177-0 against the bill. And despite intense efforts to reach an agreement acceptable to moderates in both parties, only three Republicans ended up supporting the bill in the Senate--just one more than the bare minimum needed to avert a filibuster. Meanwhile, conservative pundits and talk-show hosts have been hammering the President's plan as old-fashioned pork-barrel politics or socialism in disguise, and some former Bush Administration officials, including Dick Cheney, have been suggesting that his orders to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and ban the use of waterboarding and other
"enhanced interrogation techniques" are jeopardizing the safety of the American people.

The new president is still enjoying a honeymoon with the public. According to the Gallup Poll, almost two-thirds of Americans approve of the job that he is doing so far. That's quite a change from his predecessor who left office with an approval rating of about 30 percent. Even among Republicans, Mr. Obama started his term with a 43 percent approval rating and only a 30 percent disapproval rating--which is why most Republican leaders and conservative commentators, with the notable exception of Rush Limbaugh, have been reluctant to criticize the new president too harshly, claiming that they wish him well despite their disagreements.

Don't expect the honeymoon to last very long, though. The more decisions the president makes, the more he is going to offend the Republican base and the more free Republican leaders and conservative pundits are going to feel to attack him. That's because many of the policies that Mr. Obama supports, from withdrawing American troops from Iraq and lifting the ban on American aid, to international organizations that provide abortion counseling, to expanding government-sponsored health insurance and making it easier for unions to organize workers, are anathema to the large majority of Republican voters as well as the large majority of Republican office-holders.

One of the most important characteristics of public opinion in the United States today is polarization. Americans agree that the country has serious problems but they disagree sharply about what needs to be done about the economy, health care, climate change, the war in Iraq, gay rights, abortion, and a host of other issues. Democrats generally line up on one side of these issues while Republicans generally line up on the opposing side. And the biggest differences are found among the most interested, informed, and active members of the public--the people whose opinions matter the most to political leaders.

Journalists and editorial writers tend to see partisan conflict as a product of petty rivalries and personality clashes. They assume that Democratic and Republican leaders could settle their differences if they really wanted to, and that policies with broad bipartisan support would be better for the country than policies supported by only one party. But the major reason why partisan conflict has been so intense in the United States in recent years is not that Democratic and Republican office-holders don't like each other, but that they have fundamental disagreements on the major issues facing the country.

Since the 1970s the Democratic Party has been moving to the left, the
Republican Party has been moving to the right, and the center has been disappearing. The conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans who once exercised considerable influence in Washington are almost extinct. There are so few remaining moderates, and the ideological gulf separating the parties is so wide, that bipartisan compromise on most issues is almost impossible. And rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans, especially those who pay attention to politics, have been moving apart as well. As a result, politicians who try to compromise with the other side risk antagonizing their own base.

Contrary to the claims of some pundits and editorial writers, there is no clear relationship between bipartisanship and good public policy. The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 had broad bipartisan support. Twenty-nine Senate Democrats and 82 House Democrats voted for the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq; almost all of them ended up regretting it. And some very successful policies have been produced by highly partisan decision-making processes. In 1993, President Clinton's first budget passed Congress without a single Republican vote. Despite claims by Newt Gingrich and other GOP leaders that the tax increases included in that budget would throw the economy into a tailspin, the result was eight years of economic growth and shrinking deficits.

To win Republican support for his budget, President Clinton would have had to give up the tax increases on upper income Americans that were a critical component of his economic plan. Similarly, to win more than token Republican support for his economic stimulus package, President Obama will almost certainly have to agree to much larger tax cuts and much smaller increases in public expenditures than his economic policy advisors believe are desirable.

Barack Obama was elected on a promise of bringing change to Washington. But during the campaign he talked about two kinds of change: change in the content of public policy and change in the way Washington works and especially in what he described as the excessive partisanship of the Bush era. The problem is that these two kinds of change may be incompatible. Appointing a few Republicans to the cabinet and inviting some Republican members of Congress over to the White House to watch the Super Bowl may win Mr. Obama some compliments, but it's unlikely to win him any votes on legislation. That would require making significant concessions on the content of that legislation.

The last two elections have drastically reduced the number of moderate Republicans in the House and Senate, leaving the party more dominated than ever by hard-line conservatives who represent safe Republican districts and states. In order to win more than token support from congressional Republicans, therefore, President Obama would have to make major policy concessions to these hard-line conservatives--concessions that would almost certainly be unacceptable not only to the vast majority of congressional Democrats, but also to the vast majority of politically engaged Democrats in the country. Such concessions would require him to abandon commitments that he made to key Democratic constituencies during the 2008 campaign on issues such as health care, education, climate change, reproductive rights, and labor law reform.

Despite the President's rhetoric about the need for both parties to work together to solve the country's problems and his efforts to reach out to Republicans and conservatives, there is no indication that he is willing to make such concessions and he would be foolish to do so. It would only be seen as a sign of weakness and would lead to demands for even bigger concessions in the future.

Like it or not, in order to produce the kinds of policy changes for which he campaigned, Mr. Obama is going to have to depend overwhelmingly on the support of his fellow Democrats in the Congress and in the country. So expect more party-line votes in the House and Senate, more complaints from Republican leaders about being ignored, and more strident attacks on the president by conservative pundits and talk-show hosts. As a wise man once said, "politics ain't beanbag."