Barack Obama was elected president for two reasons. The first is that he did not rise in anger to the baiting of his opponents. Nor the baiting of his friends either, but that is a more complicated matter. The prospect of campaigning against an “angry young black man” was so attractive to various Republicans that they tried very hard to get him to say something angrily on television.
The second is that he promised bipartisanship. “There are not red states and blue states,” candidate Obama proclaimed several hundred times, “There is the United States of America.” Partisan gridlock in Congress was already a grievance to independent voters and campaigning against it was a really smart move.
That was then. This is now.
The New York Times editorialized this morning that President Obama is finally starting to do it right. He is on a bus tour in the Midwest and at every stop, he is showing his anger at the failure of the Congress to act responsibly and is blaming the Republicans for the current impasse. Maybe the Times thinks that Obama can afford to be the “angry young black man” now that he’s president. Maybe the Times is so angry and partisan that it can’t appreciate a president who is not as angry and partisan as they are. Maybe the Times thinks that the country is now hungry for an angry and partisan president.
I don’t know, but I’m partial to explanation number 2, myself.
No comments:
Post a Comment