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On Jul 10, 11:28 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:


What disappoints me about Obama is that he took so long to realize the
nature of the political resistance he would get from Republicans in
Congress. He's much too optimistic about people. More experience would
have
cured him of that, I think.


Ed Huntress

My disappointment is that he let Congress do it's job. Sounds strange
when said that way, but as the head of the Democratic Party he should
have directed Congress more rather than let Congress draft laws
without his input. In other words about the same comment as you made,
Ed. Except including "Democrats in Congress" along with "Republicans
in Congress". Essentially too optimistic about Congress.

Yeah. I'd like to know what he's been thinking, which we probably won't know
in detail until he writes his memoirs. Meantime, he seems to have put too
much faith in Congress. And he may have shot his political wad on health
care. I can't figure out how much authority that cost him in his own party,
let alone with Congress in general.

One thing we've learned is that there is no leadership in Congress that's
capable of accomplishing anything across party lines. It's an institution of
midgets. Obama's approach, which seems to be to let Congress hash it all out
and then step in to clean it up at the end, never gets us to the point where
there's anything to clean up. They just can't rise above their re-election
posturing.

We're really being victimized by minority, fringe movements that hold the
margins of loss or victory in elections. It's like Europe in the 1950s and
1960s, when fringe parties could hold out and decide the majorities in
parliament, and then demand a key concession or two in order to join a
coalition. What used to work against them, with their multi-party systems,
now appears to be working against us, where neither party can get a
coalition together without bowing to the fringe groups.

The Republican coalition is well known. The Democrats seem to have created
their own fringe -- not leftists, who remain a very small group within the
Democratic Party, but the conservative Dems who rode in on Obama's party
shirttails. On issues that are clearly conservative/liberal, as opposed to
Republican/Demicrat, they hold the key to Democratic majorities.

It's quite a mess, and, as an old student of comparative politics, it's the
first time I can remember in which distinct minorities (Tea Partiers,
conservative Democrats) are forcing parliamentary, coalition-type behavior
in Congress. And, by not leading on issues from the beginning, Obama is
enabling the whole thing, by allowing Congress to go off in all directions
at once, until the relative positions become hardened, irresolvable
commitments.

Where's LBJ when we really need him? ggg

--
Ed Huntress