More on the vision thing

Since I have very little love and absolutely no trust in Obama it may seem odd that I am giving advice in this post. So be it. It is an odd time to be in this country and getting odder by the minute.

Obama blew the first two weeks of his presidency by trying to play the "moderate" with the Right. He's done himself real damage. Damage I believe will be ongoing. Barring an immediate national crisis (which will no doubt come soon enough) the first two weeks of this administration will have been the most important this year.

BHO made the mistake modern Democratic Presidents always make: he ran from the Left, tried making nice with the GOP, and therefore played directly into their hands.

Let me interject here forcefully that I do not trust either party and am deeply ambivalent about the stimulus bill. This post is about power and politics - not economics.

By trying to get some of the GOP on board he's degraded his own bill. He did not hit the ground running, he hit it backslapping. He's weakened his bill, tried to make it bipartisan, and yet - should it not have a quick effect - the fault will stand land on his desk. Politically, it is a no win situation for Obama and he created it by not claiming and owning a core vision, then taking that vision to a Congress that by all rights should have been his to steamroll. At least it was on January 20th.

The blame will not be spread around if his weakened bill fails to produce a turnaround quickly. He'll get it. The GOP played on his worst character defect, the compulsive need to be seen as a unifier, then weakened the bill and along the way found they their sea legs again - almost immediately after suffering a severe defeat. The Right is on the verge of the quickest resurgence imaginable after last November's debacle.

Not only did he allow the GOP room to grab the megaphone, he handed over the House's version to Pelosi - who apparently allowed it to be turned into to a cavalcade of pork. The trouble here is not the pork, one man's pork is another's cash flow - and it is a spending bill after all. The trouble is that the bill has no centering idea. It is a mess. There is no vision. The bill is not a well considered meal plan as much as it is a carb laden buffet. The obvious reason: Neither Obama or Pelosi have any vision.

The belief in "bipartisanship" is no longer operative. The world views of liberals and conservatives are at odds on the most basic level. Ignoring this is not helpful or healthy. It is foolish. On January 20th, Obama needed to announce in very certain terms "This is the way it is going to be." Explained his vision, then acted on it. ( I realize the last sentence presumes that Obama had a vision past winning - which he did not.) On January 20th, 1981 Reagan intoned "Government cannot solve our problems. Government is the problem." Like it or not, that, my friends, is a vision for a nation.

On January 20th, 2008, Obama said: Can't we all just get along? The answer is usually NO. It defies logic and history to think otherwise. It is why we have elections every four years, and not civil wars. Thank God. One side wins. There is no point in ignoring that obvious truth.

He did not win by a landslide. He did win a mandate. But mandates are useless without a vision.

Paul Krugman, the liberal economist, understands the mistake Obama has made on the stimulus bill. Count me among those who think that the president made a big mistake in his initial approach, that his attempts to transcend partisanship ended up empowering politicians who take their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh.

Obama did finally go on the offensive last night in a speech to Democrats. He may recover his groove. Still, he's frittered away time and political capital, given the Right new life, and damaged his own standing by trying to play patty cake with people who want him to fail. Yes, they do. THEY WANT HIM TO FAIL. Don't think for a second that power brokers in either party want anything past the next victory. Except in war, those days are long gone in this country.

However this messy stimulus bill turns out - it is his. He owns it. A true leader - in the position he was in on January 20th-would have gotten everything he wanted. Not a steaming pile of misguided half measures.