MITT ROMNEY IS betting that tweaking Pres. Obama on Bill Clinton in Iowa will land, while just making stuff up. That he’s using a plot line that is also one of Edward Klein’s favorites illustrates the value of Regnery publishing to the right. Romney’s cracks got the attention of Politico, CNN, USA Today, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and, of course, Buzzfeed, though not for the same reasons.
“President Obama tucked away the Clinton doctrine in his large drawer of discarded ideas, along with transparency and bipartisanship. It’s enough to make you wonder if maybe it was a personal beef with the Clintons … but really it runs much deeper.” – Mitt Romney, presumptive Republican nominee
The notion that Pres. Obama “discarded” bipartisanship could only come from someone who plays fast and loose with political facts. Pres. Obama’s entire first term has been one reaction after another to Republican refusals to make deals, even when Obama served up the grand bargain to Speaker Boehner on the last debt ceiling fight.
“President Obama is an old school liberal whose first instinct is to see free enterprise as the villain and government as the hero.” – Mitt Romney
That’s just funny.
What’s more interesting is that neither Obama or Romney will take William Jefferson Clinton’s advice on what I’ve been writing is critical to solving our financial woes, which is that all the Bush tax cuts, including for the middle class, need to be rolled back. Of course, I’m also for a top 2% tax hike and expanding the cap on Social Security taxed income, while shrinking our military outposts in favor of economic models and special forces. However, if everyone could get on the same page by agreeing that Clinton’s proposal for middle class families to also give up tax cuts that we cannot afford, though without Bill Clinton’s grand bargain baloney, we’d have a start on bipartisanship that actually means something.
“Our party’s problem is, we are always reluctant to give up the gains of the past to create the future,” Bill Clinton told the audience at the Pete Peterson’s fiscal summit. “Democrats are reluctant to commit to longer-term health-care savings; they don’t want to touch Social Security.” [WashPost]
Unfortunately, our politicians are products being marketed, not leaders.
As for Romney’s claim about a “prairie fire” of debt that’s all Pres. Obama’s fault, this fallacy is part of the Democratic legacy of letting the Bush-Cheney era crowd off the mat.
George W. Bush outspent Barack Obama $5.07 TRILLION to $1.44 TRILLION.
However, I don’t feel sorry for Pres. Obama for having to fight this deficit image battle, because he’s the one who hoisted austerity up as the model and in the process moved the political conversation to the right. It’s just too bad it’s the middle class who’ll once again pay the price for his kumbaya
Great post Taylor! And as far as the bipartisanship junk, well Obama set himself up for that one. If he hadn’t campaigned on being “bipartisan” Romney wouldn’t have that to throw back in Obama’s face.
Do you feel vindicated at least a little bit from everything you said back in ’08? I do but it’s really not all that great of a feeling because the middle class in this country is suffering for Obama’s silliness just like we will continue to suffer under Romney.
The one thing that I hope people learn from all this is that EXPERIENCE DOES MATTER!!!
And if President Obama had political experience going back decades you would be here arguing the opposite, that he is an entrenched pol who’s been in office too long. Instead of blaming the GOP for their intransigence your blaming the President for being a reasonable man who’s is willing to work for others.
When Obama had the chance to do something at the beginning of his term he punted. If he had done what was needed to be done, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. The Tea Party Idiots could all be screaming and the rest of us could be laughing.
Sorry but societies aren’t changed overnight and the situation Obama walked into January 2009 required that he concentrate on stopping the economy from slipping into a flow blown recession. That whole the glass is half empty point of view gets progressives absolutely nowhere.
There was a lot of good advice out there from people like Paul Krugman and Obama failed to listen to them and listened instead to the University of Chicago supply siders. Obama has no one to blame for the mess he is in other than himself. The problem is that his actions were woefully inadequate and so here we are.
There is a difference between what you want and what can get through Congress. Paul Krugman is a columnist for the NYT, he isn’t an elected official.
Horse hockey. There’s no reason he couldn’t have ended the wars almost immediately, started investigating bankers for the fraud they committed to create that economic crisis, and said that we’d do whatever was necessary to climb out of the depression we ended up in. Instead, he did none of those things, despite having been put in office to do exactly that.
He didn’t do it, because the people who gave him the money to run for office didn’t want him to. He surrounded himself with exactly the kind of people who would give him the kind of advice that the money people wanted him to follow.
However many times you say otherwise, it doesn’t change the fact that he didn’t do the things he should have done, and could have done, had he wanted.
With others!
Comments like your are just another indication of the simple fact that this is not a rational country. Blaming this current for the state of our politics is like blaming the fireman for the fire instead of the arsonist who set it.
You’re not making much sense. I know you think Obama is blameless but if Obama did not want to deal with the mess the country was in, he should not have run for president. It was no secret that Bush was going to leave the next president a mess to deal with.
Never said President Obama was blameless. All I am saying is that he shouldn’t be held responsible for the fact that the people in Congress he is constitutionally required to deal with are crazed, bigoted and suicidal!
He did not have the tea party the entire time. He had complete control of all branches of government for two years and he failed to use that to his advantage or he failed to make the right choices on policy or both.
Of course the Rove ad doesn’t mention the hundreds of GOP filibusters and other tricks they have used over the last 31/2 years to block Obama’s attempts to fulfill said promises.
“Of course the Rove ad doesn’t mention the hundreds of GOP filibusters and other tricks they have used over the last 31/2 years to block Obama’s attempts to fulfill said promises.”
The main reason next to nothing has been accomplished is the arguably treasonous behavior of the repugnantklan/teabagger domestic terrorists and their very active war on the American people and economy as well as women and gays.
I did not vote for President Obama in the last election. Folks who have been here since then remember me as a very angry puma type. I was even considering voting for McCain until he picked Palin. So I didn’t vote for President but straight Dem down ticket.
THIS time while I am still not thrilled with President Obama the stark reality of a repugnantklan/teabagger Presidency is just frankly to awful to contemplate.
I am old enough to remember what it was like before 1973. I remember two very beautiful, hope filled and talented women who DIED because there were no safe abortions unless you were part of the 1% and could fly to Europe. They went to a backalley one and died of infections that the hospitals wouldn’t treat unless they gave up the name of the abortionist.
I remember what it was like for gays when they couyld be arrested simply for BEING and were the victims of abuse from Phila. cops under the supreme pig Rizzo. I remember the sit ins and marches for equality and voting rights for Blacks.
I REMEMBER and so am voting for President Obama…because the alternative is to horrible to contemplate.
Frank Rizzo! Now there is a name have not heard in a very long time. Ahh the good old days in Philly. As for the rest of your post? If Romney wins this election women can kiss their reproductive rights goodbye and gays can forget about any hope of achieving marriage equality.
You know what? IF the GOP controls the house and the senate the tea party is going to get what it wants because Obama will cave. You know he will. He’s done it a ton of times already. Obama could motivate a lot of people to vote for him and against the tea party if he would just stop acting like a bowl of jello when faced with opposition from the GOP.
Although I am an Obama supporter I get how you feel!
President Obama should have struck while the iron was still hot. Even Obama supporters get that point of view.
At the start of each legislative session since 2006, the Democrats have had the option to change the way Senate rules worked so that the GOP couldn’t hold up legislation via filibuster without at least performing a filibuster. They refused each time. They like not being able to do anything, because if they did they’d have to give up that gravy train of finance industry support.
They like being helpless just fine. It beats the alternative of having no excuse for getting things done.
Solo: the problem is that Obama did not even try. He didn’t try to get the right solution for the country. He just wanted to “pass something” and pass “something” he did. He wasted a ton of time trying to get the Maine sisters on board and had to waste money on the AMT when he could have used that money for jobs. When you aim for marginal results, marginal results are what you are going to get.
Ugh, Mayor Rizzo. Nasty memory.
True, Obama can’t be held responsible for the behavior of others. But he is responsible for running on “hope and change,” a content-free message that was bound to bite him later. And now it’s “Forward,” Give me a break.
Obama, to me, is guilty of something far greater than simply being an inferior leader. He is guilty of deception. All through the ’08 campaign he could see quite plainly what his devoted supporters thought he was. He knew he was none of those things; he knew that rather than being a progressive democrat he was actually a conservative democrat. He knew that once in office he would disappoint them but he didn’t care. Their revenge will be a lack of enthusiasm this time around. Some will not vote out of disgust, others will not work for him, others will not contribute. Of course I was amazed that George W. Bush managed to get re-elected after everything that occurred during his first term but you could probably blame the democrats for that one too. If Obama does indeed have the votes in the electoral college then he has nothing to worry about; but if not, the election could be Romney’s to lose.
Deception? Please! I challenge u to produce a link to any video showing the then candidate Obama claiming to be a hardcore lefty!
Please….! the absence of a video of Obama claiming to be a hardcore lefty does nor make Fangio’s post wrong.
During the campaign Obama positioned himself to the “left” of Clinton !!! At least that was my understanding and that of many others and that is why many of us voted for him. If Obama had run as the blue dog/Republican light that he is at heart, the outcome would have been different. Fair enough he had to position himself one way or the other to beat Clinton, that does not mean he did not mislead a good number of people.
To begin with the differences between them were grossly overstated by both camps, but key positions adopted by the candidates made all the difference. The biggest plus for Obama in my view was that he campaigned as an outsider and hinted that he would form a cabinet of outsiders and people that were not part of the Washington crowd. Yet what did he do once in power? He surrounded himself with the Washington crowd, appointed so many of Bill Clinton’s past advisors that it is hard to imagine how different a Clinton cabinet would have looked, he even recruited Rham Emmanuel as chief of staff!
On health care (a key decided for me back thent) his key argument against Clinton was that he was against mandates while she would force mandates on us!!! No comment.
He claimed he was in favor of a public option. Not a word was uttered on his misgivings regarding the public option until he had the keys to the WH. And his deal with insurance companies was a back stab to progressives no other way to describe it.
So yes, deception… always annoys me when people claim otherwise. All the craziness from the right does not erase that fact.
It’s easy for Bill Clinton to call for increasing everyones taxes, he isn’t running for office. As far the prairie fire of rising debt is concerned, everyone has forgotten that it was Bill Clniton who lit the match that started the prairy fire. In 1999 it was Clinton and his Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin who was the CEO of Goldman Sachs before becoming Treasury Secreatery working with the Congress who repealed the Glass Steagall Act and the de-regulation of Wall Street that led to the global financial collapse.
Clinton lit the kindling and Bush poured the gasoline on the next 10 years of rising debt and increasing national debts.
I would give anything for the good old days of the Clinton Administration and era, but the good old days seem to be gone. I voted for Obama, but this time, I am going to vote third party if there is a good candidate that runs. Romney will not get my vote no matter what. I don’t just blame President Obama, I blame the Democrats also. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi helped create Stupak along with the President, and for the party that is supposed to defend Womens Reproductive rights, that ticked me off big time. That healthcare bill is terrible, to force people to pay into insurance companies, when they could have went with single-payer or something. Cut the defense budget, among other things. President Obama seems to be expanding the military instead of pulling out of all these countries that we should not be in. For President Obama to send troops and set up a base in Australia of all places, just to prove a point to China is insane. Those are just a few things I could list of my dislikes of the Obama Administration.
I stop short of accusing him of deception. Rather, I think he cynically took advantage of folks believing the narrative. Anyone who paid close attention to his past record is not surprised.
Everyone here has made some great points – there’s some truth in all of them. My heart usually sides with Taylor’s analyses. However, my head says common sense has to prevail which means I am with the President. I don’t agree with him all the time and I wish he took the bull by the horns in the beginning of his term, but I sure don’t want the alternative. I think President Obama is a solid, smart President whose steady hand we need at this time. What we really need is systemic change and that will probably only occur when the masses have had enough b.s., organize, and outweigh the moneyed interests. The Occupy movement needs to be embraced and sustained. I, too, think we need to return to Glass-Steagall – Senator Byron Dorgan was right on that one when he gave his speech in Congress a number of years ago.
At nineteen, my eyes used to water everytime I would listen to Tracy Chapman, talkin bout a revolution and imagine poor people (the masses) rising up and taking their share. Long time ago… I am more conservative now, don’t know if the masses would ever say we have had enough with one voice.
Misleading, absolutely. But I had no problem at all figuring out he was a centrist by looking at his deals with the nuclear industry, his overly cautious positions on marriage equality and reproductive rights. He was all over the place on health care; I never took him seriously on that and I think his education policies were and continue to be weighted to far onto the corporate side. He still ran as left of Clinton; didn’t fool me for a minute and while that is deceptive behavior, people who bothered to look beyond the shiny surface knew what was up a long time ago. Nothing has surprised me except the continuation of military captivity policies. I had thought that would go away.
Like Lynnette I agree with many of the comments here.
I do wish solo would not put words in other commenter mouths and assume what they think about things.
There is an interesting piece in Vanity Fair this month. It is written from the perspective of a women who was his NY girl friend who is evidently represented by a woman in his first book , ‘Dreams of My Father’, that he says is really a composite of several early girl friends. She is a very intelligent woman who kept a journal of their time together. Even then then he was disclaiming any affinity for left wing politics. It mostly delves into his identity struggle during that time in his life.
I think one big minus factor of Obama’s is evidently just part of his character, it is an inability or unwillingness to build close relationships with other pols, particulary those in congress. Apparently neither side ever hears from him or his economic team. That is an aspect of leadership that is necessary to move things along.
I do think he and his campaign team totally dropped the ball at mid terms to the point of political malpractice, If he has stayed connected to his grassroots organizations and reveved them back up, it was only two years later, maybe we would not have the number of tea party yahoos we now have gumming up democracy.
Hi Lake Lady – hope all is well.
I never saw Obama as left wing or particularly progressive, even during the primary. I think people saw what they wanted to see. That was the beauty, for Obama, of running without much of a national record. I think I heard or read somewhere that Tom Daschle encouraged him to run, just for that reason – it would be to Obama’s advantage to run before he established much of a record.
Hey lynnette` All is fine. Are you winding down the days until you retire? I never saw him as progressive either