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Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013 | 2:01 a.m.
Another view?
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President Barack Obama tried to galvanize the country to progressive purpose in his inaugural speech, arguing that in this era, advancing time-honored individual aspirations requires collective action.
As attempts to square the ideological circle go, this was a rhetorical triumph. Yet if Obama is to realize his goals, he will have to rally the country on a continual basis.
A reasonable man, Obama craves a return to a time when agreeable people were able to work out sensible compromises.
That, however, doesn’t describe this period in American politics.
Mind you, House Speaker John Boehner has some of the same adult inclinations. He clearly would like to accomplish big, serious things — if he weren’t riding a Tea Party tiger and glancing anxiously over his shoulder at the ideological young guns who are eager to replace him. But he is, so Boehner won’t argue forcefully for the middle road he might pursue if left to his own devices.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, has simply not demonstrated that he cares about serious governance. For him, sadly, gamesmanship seems to be the entire game. The overriding purpose he has brought to his high public post has been to foil the president.
So where does that leave Obama as he confronts large and controversial issues such as climate change, gun control and immigration reform, to name just three? The best prescription comes from the late scholar Richard Neustadt, an adviser to several presidents.
“Effective influence for the man in the White House,” Neustadt wrote in his influential examination of presidential power, “stems from three related sources: first are the bargaining advantages inherent in his job with which to persuade other men that what he wants of them is what their own responsibilities require them to do. Second are the expectations of those other men regarding his ability and will to use the various advantages they think he has. Third are those men’s estimates of how his public views him and of how their publics may view them if they do what he wants.”
Given today’s politics, the third source of power will prove particularly important to Obama’s success. But that will mean going outside the capital and waging a campaign for what he wants done inside the Capitol. Although that’s not necessarily the way he’d prefer to govern, Obama does it well. After all, in a year when a number of economic models predicted he’d lose, Obama argued his way to a handy victory over Republican Mitt Romney.
In the past four years, Republicans were often able to indulge their obstructionist instincts because of these intertwined realities: Many issues never rise to the level of widespread public awareness, while others that do are sometimes difficult to elucidate to the country.
The first explains why Alabama Republican Richard Shelby, a small-minded Senate baron, was able to deny Nobel Prize-winning economist Peter Diamond a spot on the Federal Reserve Board.
The debt ceiling controversy stands as a prime example of the second. Many people don’t understand that lifting the debt limit is an essentially redundant vote to authorize borrowing for spending Congress has previously approved.
In 2011, Obama let Republicans use the debt-ceiling vote to lure him into a protracted debate over deficit reduction.
This time around, however, the president declared he wouldn’t bow to brinksmanship. Likening a GOP threat not to raise the ceiling without offsetting spending cuts to going out to dinner and then running out on the check, Obama made it clear that if the United States defaulted on its obligations, he would make the GOP wear the blame for the economic consequences.
Lo and behold, Congressional Republicans have backed off that threat, saying they will support raising the debt ceiling for four months while using other tools to push for spending cuts.
The central GOP complaint about Obama’s inaugural oratory was that it was a campaign-style speech. There’s some truth to that, but the criticism is more interesting for what it reveals about the critics. Republicans were objecting to what they fear: Obama’s ability to appeal to the public.
That’s instructive. As he starts his second term, Obama must keep uppermost in mind that the best way to win in Washington is to make his opponents fear the consequences of thwarting him.
Scot Lehigh writes for the Boston Globe.
Since I don't agree with your first sentence and the premise that goes with it. I also don't agree with the third paragraph. I'll just move on to the next article...
Scot claims "President Barack Obama tried to galvanize the country to progressive purpose in his inaugural speech..."
and failed
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Obama's Inauguration speech re-ignited and inflamed the negative tone in America.
This was Obama's annihilate the Conservatives speech
No - I repeat - No Obama call for National Unity
Obama in his WE THE GOVERNMENT inaugural speech told us he won again and his manifesto would expand the liberal progressive bigger government agenda.
This was an unyielding restatement of Obama's in your face campaign nomination speech. This was also a 50 year old inaugural speech only for gays, women, blacks, and Hispanics not the rest of the country.
Obama inaugural declared war on, and demeaned and stigmatized conservative polices and values. Fiscal responsibility and working, freedom and liberty.
And Obama declared war on the job creators saying "We the people understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it," It is interesting to note that under Obama's collectivism there are a lot fewer rich and many more middle class are poorer. Everybody is getting poorer.
No hint of concern about fiscal responsibility or of the growing infringement on personal liberties.
For foreign policy Amazingly Obama used the famous Neville Chamberlin phrase "Peace in Our Time." Chamberlin's quote of course followed his appeasement of Hitler to avoid Germany attacking England. Obama wants desperately for us to believe that al-Qaida is vanquished - is in decline.
Scot says "Given today's politics, the third source of power will prove particularly important to Obama's success. But that will mean going outside the capital and waging a campaign for what he wants done inside the Capitol."
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Obama has created an off the books 501(c)(4) non-profit campaign agenda PAC "Community" organization "Organizing for Action" to avoid negotiating with conservative that opposite his policies. Thats right Obama pays no taxes on this multi-million dollar business.
The sole purpose of the Obama 501(c)(4) non-profit is to denigrate and vilify the opposition while Obama can sit smugly in the WH and claim to being above the mean spirited brawl.
Why is this necessary - Obama is seeking a legacy - but a legacy needs a great national decision for a great national crisis. Washington brought forth a new Country and Lincoln ended slavery. Something Obama who has a listless lackluster agenda and is incapable of.
Obama is using the same campaign team (Jim Messina and Stephanie Cutter) that implemented his "KILL HIS ENEMEY strategy (they are murderers and racists and felons) - bad faith ressentiment character assassination and vilification of an honest opposition - right out of the Sal Alinsky play book.
What will be Obama's legacy - increasing national debt from $10 trillion to $23 trillion in eight years. We are half way there today with 23 million underemployed and 50 million on food stamps
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No hint of working across the parties. No extended hand.
- The WH (Pfeiffer) said "We do not have an opposition party worthy of the opportunity..." to work together
- CBS News' political director John Dickerson wrote in Slate.com and urged Obama to "pulverize" and destroy his Republican opponents -- even "go for the throat" -- in order to "cement his legacy." Dickerson wrote. "The president....can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat."
Obama is just a corporate guy at heart. Do not expect much. have a drink and go back to bed.
President Obama puts only a dollar price tag on a huge bloated social welfare state. He ignores the moral cost to the fabric of society by making people who are not needy takers of government benefits. To such a degree, that generations of Americans don't know anything except living off the government and believe it is their right to do so without EVER giving anything back.
CarmineD
often to indulge,
Wasn't that the tactic used by someone in Europe during the 30s?