Clive Crook, last week:
This might be true, if we lived in a world where theory supplanted reality. But we don't. So, what else was President Obama to do? It seems to me - and maybe I'm just a rabid Obamaphile, so whatever I say is suspect - that the President did everything he felt he could, without crossing over into the legislative process. He held a prime time press conference almost exclusively focused on health care, which was overshadowed by the press corps silly infatuation with Henry Louis Gates. He addressed a joint session of Congress, which was overshadowed by the press corps infatuation with a disrespectful and factually challenged Congressfool from South Carolina. What he did not do is dictate terms - which would, in my view, have spelled doom for any health care reform bill whatsoever. So, again, what else was President Obama to do, because that's what Krugman was complaining about when he said Crook was content free. Which he still is.
And whose fault is it that the public is not behind this reform, which Krugman and I both support? It is partly the Republicans' fault, to be sure, for refusing to compromise. It is also the fault of progressive Democrats, for denouncing compromise as the work of the devil--then sourly advocating it (like Krugman) or continuing to rail against it. Mainly, though, it is Obama's fault. Rallying the country behind good policy is a crucial part of his job. It is his responsibility more than anybody else's. Unlike Krugman, I think highly enough of him to believe that he could have done it if he'd tried.
This might be true, if we lived in a world where theory supplanted reality. But we don't. So, what else was President Obama to do? It seems to me - and maybe I'm just a rabid Obamaphile, so whatever I say is suspect - that the President did everything he felt he could, without crossing over into the legislative process. He held a prime time press conference almost exclusively focused on health care, which was overshadowed by the press corps silly infatuation with Henry Louis Gates. He addressed a joint session of Congress, which was overshadowed by the press corps infatuation with a disrespectful and factually challenged Congressfool from South Carolina. What he did not do is dictate terms - which would, in my view, have spelled doom for any health care reform bill whatsoever. So, again, what else was President Obama to do, because that's what Krugman was complaining about when he said Crook was content free. Which he still is.
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