Obama's Power Surge

[babylonsister]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-28/obamas-power-grab/full/

Obama's Power Surge

by Peter Beinart

Ever since health care passed, the president is getting comfortable with flexing his muscles. Peter Beinart on the rise of the liberal Reagan.


Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed? He’s sticking it to the Senate by appointing 15 nominees while it is on recess; he’s sticking it to Benjamin Netanyahu by not backing down from demands that Israel halt building in East Jerusalem; he’s sticking it to the banks by aggressively pushing financial reform. It’s hard to believe that only two months ago, Paul Krugman announced that “I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”

What’s happened? Obama fired his air traffic controllers.

snip//

With the passage of health care, Obama has now had his air-traffic controllers’ moment. When Scott Brown won in Massachusetts, it convinced many political observers that the old rules still applied. The country was still basically suspicious of big government, and thus, the only way for a Democratic president to survive was to do what Bill Clinton did after 1994: content himself with incremental change, accept the political parameters that Reagan established, be a Democratic Eisenhower.

When Obama decided to push for comprehensive reform anyway, he signaled that he would not play that role. And when he and the Democrats won, they blew up the old political order. In Washington, for the first time in his presidency, Obama is feared. Suddenly, Democrats are not so terrified about the midterm elections. Influential conservatives like David Frum are scolding their party’s leaders for not cutting a bipartisan deal. The Russians have backed down and signed an arms-control pact that doesn’t scrap missile defense in Eastern Europe. As Helene Cooper of The New York Times recently put it, “there is a swagger emanating from the White House that suggests he may now have acquired a liking for the benefits of sticking his neck out to lead.”

Will Obama become hugely popular anytime soon? Probably not. Reagan and the GOP still got clobbered in the 1982 midterm elections, largely because the country was in deep recession. And Obama and the Democrats will probably suffer this fall as well. But if the economy recovers in 2011 and 2012, and Obama rides that recovery to reelection, as Reagan did in 1984, he will be able to say he changed the rules of the political game, and won a mandate from the country. Then we’ll know for sure what more and more people already suspect: The Age of Reagan is over. Welcome to the Age of Obama.

[Clio the Leo]

1. The pronouncements of the President's "weakness" were always premature....

.... and made by those who were rich in words and poor in patience.

I said over and over and over and over again .... there is a huge chunk of the electorate that was going to perceive health care reform and the way it had to be achieved as the Democrats "ramming it down the throats" of the American people. The President had to demonstrate that he was bending over backwards by giving the GOP a seat at the table .... which he literally did .... in order to build enough political capitol to get the bill passed.

There are some who still feel this bill was "rammed down our throats" but they are on the fringe. Most Americans understand that this bill was passed only after a long, bitter struggle where the President relied more on patience than brute force.

Again, those who thought they were electing a strong arming bully did not understand the man they cast their vote for.

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. +1

[dccrossman]

2. kick

[TwilightGardener]

3. OK, he is NOT the liberal Reagan. Reagan couldn't remember what he ate for lunch

by the time his second term was almost up. He was an actor who delivered his lines, nothing more.

[Jennicut]

4. Be strong and the people who voted for you will get behind you.

Obama may not stop the Dems from losing 20 or so seats in the House but he can stop them from losing 40 or more.