It was December 1944 and General George S. Patton was sitting in a room full of generals. The Germans had just launched The Ardennes Offensive, better known as The Battle of the Bulge, and General Eisenhower wanted to know who among them could relieve the beleaguered forces at Bastogne. Patton spied the room for a brief moment and then blurted out, “I can attack with three divisions in 48 hours.”
The other generals were astounded at Patton’s bravado and openly questioned how he could make such a commitment of his soldiers who were already involved in a substantial campaign and would have to travel over 100 miles in the middle of a fierce snow storm. His reply was equally astounding, “They’ll do it because they’re good soldiers and because they realize as I do that we can still lose this war.”
In one sentence Patton had nailed it on the head. Of his many memorable quotes, none were so on point and foreboding as that one, for Patton was not one to count his chickens before they hatched. Despite the apparent superiority of the Allied forces and the shrinking morale of the German army, the war was not over. The enemy had not yet been defeated. A misstep here, a misstep there could spell disaster. We all know what happened: Patton’s divisions arrived in time to rescue Bastogne and within months, the Germans had surrendered. The war in Europe was over. The moral of that story was simple: never assume anything. The fight is never over so long as your adversary is still alive. To quote the great Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”
Pity President Obama never met George Patton. Pity the Democratic Party never met George Patton. Since their meteoric ascension last November, which gave them virtually unfettered power, both Obama and the Democratic House and Senate have behaved like a football team entering the third quarter with a three touchdown lead playing prevent defense. Anyone who has ever seen a football game knows full well that teams that employ such a defense usually prevent themselves from winning. They are constantly on their heals while their opponents continue to march up and down the field. The rationale given for this defense is based on the assumption that three touchdown leads are rarely overcome. And certainly of course, the way the political landscape looked last year, that assumption seemed as secure as gold. The Republican Party was in retreat and disarray, politically isolated and socially in the hands of individuals who neither had the intellectual capacity to understand the position they were in or the vision to plot a course out of the wilderness. Pundits began to openly wonder if a comparison to the Whig Party was not appropriate. But, as any competent sportscaster will tell you, that’s why they play four quarters.
From the beginning of his administration, Barack Obama has displayed an uncanny inability or unwillingness to follow through on the promises he made on the campaign trail. And even when he has found the willingness to pursue those promises, his ineptitude has been his own worst enemy. He has behaved like the coach of the team ahead by three touchdowns, desperately trying to hang on to the lead seemingly given to him by Providence. And the opposing side, far from calling it a night, has consistently chomped away at the lead, one grueling first down at a time. The result is an administration and a Congress that has lost the momentum and is in jeopardy of losing the game outright. Instead of taking it to them and forcing the issue, which got them the lead in the first place, the play it safe approach the Democrats have chosen has played right into the hands of the Republicans. And the Republicans have capitalized on their new-found fortune. Why bother crafting a message when your opponent keeps punting the ball back to you?
Astonishing!
The facts do not lie. They reveal in exact detail the nature of the malady that currently besets the majority party. Despite a mandate of epic proportions, not once in the first few months did Obama and the Democrats craft a message that clearly outlined what they stood for. Up till now they ran on the premise that they were not Bush and the Republicans. That worked for a while. The angst against the GOP was well deserved. Bush and his cronies had gotten us into two wars and wrecked the economy. True Clinton helped a bit when he allowed the Glass-Steagall Act to be repealed, thus setting in motion a series of events that eventually lead to the financial collapse. Still someone had to pay and the American people decided a change was needed. The problem was that Democrats misread the nature of the angst. They wanted change, but they also wanted boldness. What they got was a party that couldn’t get out of its own way; that often acted like it didn’t know who was driving the bus. By contrast, the Republicans seemed unified and displayed surprising determination. Their message was "no", "no", "no", and while many political pundits wondered about the wisdom of such a stance, it proved surprisingly successful.
Case in point, virtually every poll taken in the weeks and months after Obama took office showed overwhelming support for healthcare reform. A strong public option was what the public wanted. But the Administration, in an attempt to avoid the 93-94 fiasco, off-loaded the whole process into the hands of Congress. House and Senate Democrats, in an effort to appease the more moderate and conservative elements within their ranks, then ostensibly tore the guts out of the bill, removing the majority of the reforms the President had called for, including the public option. And while Democrats were playing politics, the GOP geared up its propaganda machine and by mid-August, the corporate-sponsored Town Halls were stoking the worst fears of Americans with false charges of death panels and a socialist takeover of healthcare, with nary a peep out of the President or Congressional Democrats.
By the time Obama finally addressed the nation in September to make his appeal for reform, the momentum had turned and the mood of the country was growing increasingly volatile. Support for the bill, however, had started going south as early as July. Why the two month delay? Why did it take so long for the President of the United States and the Democratic Party as a whole to stand up and challenge critics of the bill? Whatever the cause, the delay proved costly, as more and more Democrats in the center succumbed to cold feet. When the Senate bill finally passed in December, not only did it lack a public option, it lacked any meaningful support among progressives in the country who correctly felt they had been sold down the river. Moreover, independents were bailing on it as well.
The special election in Massachusetts was touted by conservatives as a referendum on Obamacare; in reality, polls taken on election night were quite revealing. 22% of registered Democrats voted for Republican Scott Brown - who had supported the Massachusetts healthcare plan - and the biggest reason they did so was their dissatisfaction with the Senate healthcare bill. They had wanted a robust reform bill and what they saw was a party capitulating on principles. That, plus a lackluster Democratic candidate, spelled disaster on election day.
The stimulus bill was another example of a half-measured response to a crisis situation. Virtually every prominent economist has stated that the government needed to step in to keep the economy from going off the cliff into a depression. The problem wasn’t the stimulus, but rather its size. Keynesian economists tend to agree that during periods of recession strong and massive infusions of capital are necessary to jump-start the economy. Paul Krugman has stated that a stimulus of approximately $1.5 trillion was called for to not only thwart a depression, but to revitalize the economy and get it back up on its feet. Larry Summers as early as December of 2008 warned that the risk of “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”
Unfortunately for the country, the President did not head the warnings of either man, and instead opted for a more middle of the road option that was more expedient and then committed the ultimate political faux pas by promising that unemployment would not rise above 8%. When it reached 10% by the fall, Obama’s critics had a field day. And now, with the worst over, but the economy still stuck in neutral, the political will to revisit this issue is all but gone. The forecast for 2010 calls for slow growth with little or no decrease in unemployment. GOP gains in Congress are inevitable; the only question remaining is how many Democrats will fall.
And the real shame is all this was avoidable. The senseless and destructive banter and the corporate-underwritten rage of the tea party movement gained traction within the body politic thanks largely to a President who showed an uncanny lack of spine when it came to defining his message and a stubborn reluctance to push back against the lies in the same manner FDR did so brilliantly during his three plus terms. The progressive many thought they were voting for turned into the consummate pragmatist at a time when the nation needed the visionary most. Worst, Obama’s lack of empathy coupled with the aloofness of a college professor that he sometimes showed a little too much during the campaign - and is emblematic among many liberal Democrats - began to rub independents the wrong way. Even those who still thought he was capable were growing a bit annoyed at his seeming detachment. The public was looking for the Commander in Chief; what they got was the Delegator in Chief.
But all may not be lost. Despite the setbacks of the last year and the hits this president has taken to his prestige, like the recession the worst may be over. In his State of the Union address, Obama seemed far more confrontational and determined to “set the record straight.” He challenged both Democrats and Republicans to solve the nation’s problems and stop the back and forth banter. He also acknowledged his own mistakes. It was the first time in almost a year that the nation saw a fighter.
But the biggest reason for hope is that despite the recent gains that Republicans have made, mainly as a result of the ineptitude of this President, we are still talking about a party that still has no coherent, viable solution that doesn’t include the word “no” or an overly nostalgic reliance on failed policies from the past.
But to take back the mantle and stem the tide, this President is going to have to do a much better job of defining a narrative that heretofore he has been reluctant to do. Whether he enjoys it or not, or even if it rubs him the wrong way, he is going to have to get it through his head that his political opponents are not now, nor have they ever been, interested in bipartisanship. As Jon Stewart so wryly observed, no matter how much he tries to move to the center, "They're not going to let you in the car!" The wingnuts of the GOP are running the show and their goal is nothing short of complete victory and that means stopping this President no matter the costs. Obama must stop trying to reach out to a party that has no intention of reaching back. He must abandon his pragmatism and assert his will. While he has lost a lot of the political capital he had at the start of his term, he still has the biggest and loudest pulpit from which to call out and challenge his opponents. The few times he has ventured out of his comfort zone and done this has worked. He must do it more often.
He also must become more empathetic and less detached. The articulate orator that thrilled the throngs on the campaign trail must be replaced by a more compassionate man who understands the dire straits that many Americans find themselves in, and who can relate to their suffering. Even when the depression was at its worst, Roosevelt was always able to identify with and reassure the millions who were hurting. His fireside chats were legendary and put his Republican opponents back on their heals. It also bought him the political capital to put in place the programs and reforms that helped bring the nation out of the depression. Obama desperately needs to find that spirit if he intends on being more than a one-term president. More importantly, he must honor the pledges he made on the campaign trail when he ran as a progressive. If he intends on fighting for healthcare reform, he must find a way to get progressives back on board and do a far better job at explaining what it is he wants. He cannot afford the luxury of naively believing that the majority of Americans will figure it out on their own. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if history has taught us anything it is that those who care enough to fight for what they believe in usually get their points across and prevail. Those who don’t become footnotes.
Obama must become his own General Patton and go on the offensive. He must realize that the war’s outcome is still in doubt, and that the enemy has not only not been defeated, but is launching its own winter offensive. The lead has shrunk to only a field goal, but it is a lead nonetheless. At stake is more than just a mid-term election; the future of the Republic and perhaps the whole planet hangs in the balance. The specter of a Palin Administration beckons and with it the hordes of ideologues whose intentions have been made all too plain. To the rational mind that is a fate too terrifying to contemplate. Now is the time for Obama to show the temerity he ran on and become the President this nation desperately needs and deserves.
The cost of failure is too high to calculate.
The facts do not lie. They reveal in exact detail the nature of the malady that currently besets the majority party. Despite a mandate of epic proportions, not once in the first few months did Obama and the Democrats craft a message that clearly outlined what they stood for. Up till now they ran on the premise that they were not Bush and the Republicans. That worked for a while. The angst against the GOP was well deserved. Bush and his cronies had gotten us into two wars and wrecked the economy. True Clinton helped a bit when he allowed the Glass-Steagall Act to be repealed, thus setting in motion a series of events that eventually lead to the financial collapse. Still someone had to pay and the American people decided a change was needed. The problem was that Democrats misread the nature of the angst. They wanted change, but they also wanted boldness. What they got was a party that couldn’t get out of its own way; that often acted like it didn’t know who was driving the bus. By contrast, the Republicans seemed unified and displayed surprising determination. Their message was "no", "no", "no", and while many political pundits wondered about the wisdom of such a stance, it proved surprisingly successful.
Case in point, virtually every poll taken in the weeks and months after Obama took office showed overwhelming support for healthcare reform. A strong public option was what the public wanted. But the Administration, in an attempt to avoid the 93-94 fiasco, off-loaded the whole process into the hands of Congress. House and Senate Democrats, in an effort to appease the more moderate and conservative elements within their ranks, then ostensibly tore the guts out of the bill, removing the majority of the reforms the President had called for, including the public option. And while Democrats were playing politics, the GOP geared up its propaganda machine and by mid-August, the corporate-sponsored Town Halls were stoking the worst fears of Americans with false charges of death panels and a socialist takeover of healthcare, with nary a peep out of the President or Congressional Democrats.
By the time Obama finally addressed the nation in September to make his appeal for reform, the momentum had turned and the mood of the country was growing increasingly volatile. Support for the bill, however, had started going south as early as July. Why the two month delay? Why did it take so long for the President of the United States and the Democratic Party as a whole to stand up and challenge critics of the bill? Whatever the cause, the delay proved costly, as more and more Democrats in the center succumbed to cold feet. When the Senate bill finally passed in December, not only did it lack a public option, it lacked any meaningful support among progressives in the country who correctly felt they had been sold down the river. Moreover, independents were bailing on it as well.
The special election in Massachusetts was touted by conservatives as a referendum on Obamacare; in reality, polls taken on election night were quite revealing. 22% of registered Democrats voted for Republican Scott Brown - who had supported the Massachusetts healthcare plan - and the biggest reason they did so was their dissatisfaction with the Senate healthcare bill. They had wanted a robust reform bill and what they saw was a party capitulating on principles. That, plus a lackluster Democratic candidate, spelled disaster on election day.
The stimulus bill was another example of a half-measured response to a crisis situation. Virtually every prominent economist has stated that the government needed to step in to keep the economy from going off the cliff into a depression. The problem wasn’t the stimulus, but rather its size. Keynesian economists tend to agree that during periods of recession strong and massive infusions of capital are necessary to jump-start the economy. Paul Krugman has stated that a stimulus of approximately $1.5 trillion was called for to not only thwart a depression, but to revitalize the economy and get it back up on its feet. Larry Summers as early as December of 2008 warned that the risk of “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”
Unfortunately for the country, the President did not head the warnings of either man, and instead opted for a more middle of the road option that was more expedient and then committed the ultimate political faux pas by promising that unemployment would not rise above 8%. When it reached 10% by the fall, Obama’s critics had a field day. And now, with the worst over, but the economy still stuck in neutral, the political will to revisit this issue is all but gone. The forecast for 2010 calls for slow growth with little or no decrease in unemployment. GOP gains in Congress are inevitable; the only question remaining is how many Democrats will fall.
And the real shame is all this was avoidable. The senseless and destructive banter and the corporate-underwritten rage of the tea party movement gained traction within the body politic thanks largely to a President who showed an uncanny lack of spine when it came to defining his message and a stubborn reluctance to push back against the lies in the same manner FDR did so brilliantly during his three plus terms. The progressive many thought they were voting for turned into the consummate pragmatist at a time when the nation needed the visionary most. Worst, Obama’s lack of empathy coupled with the aloofness of a college professor that he sometimes showed a little too much during the campaign - and is emblematic among many liberal Democrats - began to rub independents the wrong way. Even those who still thought he was capable were growing a bit annoyed at his seeming detachment. The public was looking for the Commander in Chief; what they got was the Delegator in Chief.
But all may not be lost. Despite the setbacks of the last year and the hits this president has taken to his prestige, like the recession the worst may be over. In his State of the Union address, Obama seemed far more confrontational and determined to “set the record straight.” He challenged both Democrats and Republicans to solve the nation’s problems and stop the back and forth banter. He also acknowledged his own mistakes. It was the first time in almost a year that the nation saw a fighter.
But the biggest reason for hope is that despite the recent gains that Republicans have made, mainly as a result of the ineptitude of this President, we are still talking about a party that still has no coherent, viable solution that doesn’t include the word “no” or an overly nostalgic reliance on failed policies from the past.
But to take back the mantle and stem the tide, this President is going to have to do a much better job of defining a narrative that heretofore he has been reluctant to do. Whether he enjoys it or not, or even if it rubs him the wrong way, he is going to have to get it through his head that his political opponents are not now, nor have they ever been, interested in bipartisanship. As Jon Stewart so wryly observed, no matter how much he tries to move to the center, "They're not going to let you in the car!" The wingnuts of the GOP are running the show and their goal is nothing short of complete victory and that means stopping this President no matter the costs. Obama must stop trying to reach out to a party that has no intention of reaching back. He must abandon his pragmatism and assert his will. While he has lost a lot of the political capital he had at the start of his term, he still has the biggest and loudest pulpit from which to call out and challenge his opponents. The few times he has ventured out of his comfort zone and done this has worked. He must do it more often.
He also must become more empathetic and less detached. The articulate orator that thrilled the throngs on the campaign trail must be replaced by a more compassionate man who understands the dire straits that many Americans find themselves in, and who can relate to their suffering. Even when the depression was at its worst, Roosevelt was always able to identify with and reassure the millions who were hurting. His fireside chats were legendary and put his Republican opponents back on their heals. It also bought him the political capital to put in place the programs and reforms that helped bring the nation out of the depression. Obama desperately needs to find that spirit if he intends on being more than a one-term president. More importantly, he must honor the pledges he made on the campaign trail when he ran as a progressive. If he intends on fighting for healthcare reform, he must find a way to get progressives back on board and do a far better job at explaining what it is he wants. He cannot afford the luxury of naively believing that the majority of Americans will figure it out on their own. Nature abhors a vacuum, and if history has taught us anything it is that those who care enough to fight for what they believe in usually get their points across and prevail. Those who don’t become footnotes.
Obama must become his own General Patton and go on the offensive. He must realize that the war’s outcome is still in doubt, and that the enemy has not only not been defeated, but is launching its own winter offensive. The lead has shrunk to only a field goal, but it is a lead nonetheless. At stake is more than just a mid-term election; the future of the Republic and perhaps the whole planet hangs in the balance. The specter of a Palin Administration beckons and with it the hordes of ideologues whose intentions have been made all too plain. To the rational mind that is a fate too terrifying to contemplate. Now is the time for Obama to show the temerity he ran on and become the President this nation desperately needs and deserves.
The cost of failure is too high to calculate.
