The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    Get him out of there

    By Flavius on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 5:09am |

    In 1960 Bobby Kennedy was addressing a lunch/rally in Cincinnati  when in the middle of some comments about the impact of religious prejudice on Jack's campaign.  His voice broke and he began crying. 

    We all stood and applauded to give him a chance to recover his composure.  Including  the table of union leaders with whom I was sitting.  But to a man (all men, then) they mumbled to one another "Get him out of there":  that someone needed to take Bobby off the campaign trail until he could handle the pressure.

    I flashed on that this week with Obama's press conference attack on his supporters. Unlike many here I feel the deal with the Republicans was fine.  Wanting ain't getting, and that was the best we were able to get.  I'm convinced by the economists' consensus that'll take a point of the unemployment level over the next year.  Please.

    But Obama's self indulgent attack on his supporters had me saying to myself "get him out of there".

    Presidents don't whine that they're being misunderstood.  And politicians don't insult their supporters. Not unless it's a planned "throw mamma off the train" ploy.  But this didn't sound like that.  Instead it sounded like an overwrought Obama feeling sorry for himself.

    Compare FDR.  One of his few campaign appearances in 1944 was before the Teamsters...He discussed the Republican attacks this way:

    'Not content with attacking me' -- in a pretend-hurt tone of voice -- ' my wife Eleanor'...-- drawn out -- 'and my son Elliott'  -- voice rising in pretend-indignation -- 'they even attack my little dog Fala.'

    Whatever followed was drowned out by the mixture of laughter and applause.  As was Dewey's campaign.

    Presidents don't whine.

    Comments

    Flavius, thanks for that reminiscence of Bobby Kennedy. I think Obama's comments were premeditated since the purpose of the press conference was to quell criticism. But I saw them as a lecture rather than a whine--but maybe they're one in the same. There was one line thrown in about "itching for a fight" that I liked. I think the package is back door stimulus and that's why I'm going along with it. Others here have convinced me of the grave dangers of Obama not being able to reverse these tax cuts when the time comes. I think we have to be careful about words like "whine" and "cave-in" which I see as pre-scripted by Luntz and Fox and ably picked up by mainstream, huffpost, etc.

    The matter of "triangulation" is also contained in the "lecture". Call it what you want Obama is moving to bring the higher income Independents  back into his fold. But in so doing he may actually lose a chunk of his base. This latter I think is dependent on what he does in the next couple of months--my particular whipping boy is the banks, there's no justification for the banks to exist as a monopoly and when Obama shows a change of heart about it my support will go up exponentially.


    by Oxy Mora on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 9:11am

    Since I considered it a political mistake  on a couple of grounds I, perhaps naively, didn't allow for the possibility that his unfortunate outbreak could have been planned. 

    I won't try to respond to your view on the banks since I'd have to first concoct a sensible position. I do recommend the interesting exchange today on Brad Delong's blog between him and Dean Baker on the relative roles , in the world's-yeah, the world's- current disgraceful economic malaise .of the housing bubble and the financial follies. Certainly if we let this happen again it'll be both a crime and a blunder.

    AOBTW I heard-on the radio- FDR's address to the Teamsters as a very young Republican furious that he was running rings around us. Sick and tired and overworked , put him in front of a microphone and he was a master.


    by Flavius on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 10:58am

    Flav,

    I am trying to find what early FDR speech Bill Clinton said Friday that he recommended to Obama regarding triangulation/progressivism. Read the problem we are running into trying to find it,

    here in three comments:

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/aint-1936-7782#comment-97263

    Any ideas?


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 12:18pm

    Sorry. No luck.

    What's clear is that FDR would have scorned  appeallng  for sympathy from his  enemies or , lord knows, from his supporters.


    by Flavius on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 5:37pm

    "Itching for a fight!" and actually punching someone in the nose when the opportunity presents itself are two different things.

    These tax cuts for the rich did not need to be linked to unemployment compensation or anything else for that matter. They are wholly indefensible in their own right. They are absolutely horrible policy. The people know it. They do not support them. And yet, the President decided to go around Congress and negotiate a "compromise" with the Repubs on this issue, and he allows the Repubs to establish linkage in a way that leads to blackmail. "Give us our tax cuts for the rich, or else the unemployed worker gets it in the neck!" they say.

    I almost spat when I heard the "itching for a fight" reference in his talk. If not now, when, Mr. Tough Guy? It was almost as pathetic a statement as any of the other whines he committed during the interview. Followed by President Clinton's White House Presser - wherein Obama stood by holding his coat until such time he was needed elsewhere (toilet was plugged or something?), it was definitely not a Profile in Courage.

    Yeah, perhaps it's time to get him out of there before he gets hurt.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 10:59am

    Please explain how "triangulation" leads to this abomination. The independents were fully on board with antipathy towards tax cuts for the rich. From a negotiating standpoint, it simply makes no sense at all to allow the opposition to establish quid pro quo linkage on something that is so incredibly indefensible. Obama's position taken on this ranged way beyond weakness right into the realm of incompetence. If he truly felt he was making an exercise in "triangulation," I'd say the sonofabitch was too cute by half.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 11:11am

    I agree that " itching for a fight" was embarrassing,

     I don't agree  the tax cuts for the rich was a no brainer. I think the republicans were ready and able to prevent any further action by this congress  dooming ,for example, the extension of unemployment compensation and causing  a million individual heartbreaks.And another jump in the unemployment level.

    And I don't worry much about the current linkages having much impact on next year's negotiations. Since when have the republicans cared about logic.They'll argue what they feel like irrespective of any precedent.

    As I see it, Obama settled for half (or you might say less) a loaf rather than no loaf at all. 

    I just wish he did it without the display of petulant base baiting.

     


    by Flavius on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 11:54am

    Cubs fan, perchance? "Wait 'til next year!" is somehow beginning to sound like a pretty pathetic excuse for supposed leadership that has cowardice matched with incompetence as its hallmark.

    Or maybe he's the New Age President? He really can't get anything done until the planets are in the correct alignment? Methinks the only moon rising here is his own, as the Republicans kick him square in the ass every time he bends over - which is far too often for my liking.


    by SleepinJeezus on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 12:00pm

    I think it has something to do with a guy named Euclid and something about being three sided which wont work well in America since we only have two parties.
    the end

    by Richard Day on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 4:11pm

    Here's a comparison that struck me as pretty fruitful, and I think it might also relate to some of the things you are feeling-- two takes on it:

    http://blogs.rep-am.com/worth_reading/2010/12/11/barack-obama-is-george-...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/09/opinion/09meacham.html

    Really seems to me there are a lot of similarities in modus operandi, personality, governing attitude.

    It should probably be pointed out, though, that GHWBush probably wouldn't have had any trouble getting re-elected if the economy was better at the time (hence the Carville war room rule "it's the economy stupid!" reminding the campaign that if they get too carried away with other stuff, they will lose.)


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 11:46am

    I need to add to that something. You saw Obama's comments as whining. I didn't, I definitely agree with Oxymora's take--he was lecturing, that's the way I often see him and did see him during his presidential campaign. It puzzled me that so many found him "inspirational," just because with his speechwriters he conjured up a few speeches channelling MLK and RFK and delivered them with the cadence that he learned from studying preachers after he lost his first try at getting elected. Most of the time he lectured, he lectured like the part time law professor he was. He lectured about people trying to get along with each other, he lectured to stop the fighting.

    I think people who were his strongest supporters from early on understood the lecturing and liked it and the message. I think of those people as his "base." especially the young folks of the Obama website who weren't into the liberal blogosphere but seemed to see bipartisanship as an alternative to the kind of political bickering  they grew up seeing on cable TV, that's the main message they liked. They didn't want to be part of the gridlock and the liberal vs. conservative fight, they wanted to be part of a new bipartisan kind of movemnet. Others, especially a lot of progressives/liberals seemed to dislike the lecturing thing about him at first but then started to jump on the bandwagon when he gave the more vague "inspirational" speeches, and invest in him something that wasn't there, ignoring the lecturing thing.

    He lectures people, he does it with the GOP peeps, too. GHW Bush did that, too, that's one place where I see strong similarities. Bush would often say to his base "now you're being unreasonable" type stuff, i.e. that guy is not as evil as you say, or there are some good ideas to their argument, they have good intentions if mostly wrong, etc.

    Of course, the whining vs. lecturing thing is in the eye of the beholder. If you see it as whining, you are not wrong, it's what you see, and he's the one with the problem that you see it that way.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 12:20pm

    The day when we can all consistently embrace the notion that we only know our perception of reality, rather than reality itself, is the day we can really move the collective dialogue forward. 

    But I would add regarding this whining vs. lecturing notion that basically one could just make to the comment to most political blogs out in the blogosphere "you're just whining" or "you're just lecturing" and leave it at that.  Another way one can see it, just as one can see all those authors of those political blogs, is that it someone saying "this is how I see it" and "this is how I feel about that."  People complain that politicians are all fake, throwing up their little public personas.  But when one of them like Obama just lets us see them as a real person, who gets frustrated and peeved, we all freak out about it.  Just one more inconsistency in the voting public to drive a politican to frustration.


    by Elusive Trope on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 12:28pm

    Let's not forget G HW Bush's successful presidential campaign in which his basic proposition was that one doesn't want to change horses mid-stream.  If the situation is improving, even if it isn't great, Americans are unlikely to want to risk going for a new untried approach.


    by Elusive Trope on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 1:24pm

    Another fruitful thing about the comparison--the whole "voodoo economics" thing which is very apropos to the tax cut deal.

    Bush started that in 1980 with a speech at Carnegie Mellon according to wikiquote

    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush

    That was him "triangulating" if you want to call it that against the Reaganite trickle down branch.

    It is ironic--maybe not--that Obama is using that group to make a deal with?

    And it is widely argued that Bush lost his base and the election by breaking the "no new taxes" promise. I do remember him trying to get it back towards the end of the 1992 campaign by saying something along the lines of "watch your wallet, America, the Dems are coming for it" more than once or twice. I also remember thinking that didn't seem natural for him but rather something a campaign advisor made up for him to say in the final desperate days.


    by artappraiser on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 1:36pm

    Obama don't got game. Never did, never will. Forget a bank crackdown. Maybe he will defend his healthcare plan. Maybe he will modify it and do what Boehner or Kyl instruct him to do. Artappraiser has a link to Jon Meacham in the NYT, this is the guy who compared Tony Blair and George W. Bush and their war to Roosevelt and Churchill on the Fox News O'Reilly Show, Meacham seems to think Obama is a courageous guy for giving away his principles to nudge the economy up a little, all while hoping to get re-elected. I think that is the opposite of courage.

    Meacham sees honor and courage wherever he looks, he writes big books on it. He thinks Obama is like Bush One, and Blair is like Churchill, Bush 2 like FDR. Many don't agree.

    Obama either delegates legislation and leadership to others, or pre-emptively capitulates to the GOP with excuses he is saving the country.

    From the Olbermann show, Feb, 2008, machinist union president from Illinois. After saying Obama 'didn't stand with the unions', and 'didn't help us with Maytag' he said:

    TOM BUFFENBARGER, MACHINIST UNION PRESIDENT:  This guy won‘t last a round against a Republican attack machine.  He‘s a poet, not a fighter.


    by NCD on Sun, 12/12/2010 - 12:22pm

    The best we could get?  Hardly and not even by a long shot.

    The deal Obama presented to the nation was the best deal we could get without resisting the Republican demands in any way, in other words it was the best deal we could get via capitulation.  The policy of appeaement of authoritarian bullies has proven over and over again that it doesn't work.  I'm getting sick of these guys who get eleced (like Obama) who are clueless as to what has been going on in US politics for the past 30-40 years.


    by oleeb on Mon, 12/13/2010 - 2:19am