Obama: The Problem is You, Not Me
And all you Republicans coming to D.C. in January are going to have to learn to love me: President Obama reveals in a magazine article that he is weighing what to do if Republicans win the House majority next month, and has come up with a novel approach: Make the GOP work with him. In a seeming twist on the post-1994 midterm calculation made by President Bill Clinton — when Republicans pummeled Democrats in the congressional election — Obama said he thinks Republicans will have to move in his direction no matter the outcome of the Nov. 2 vote. “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he is quoted saying in the Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.” Accusing the public of mistaking his abilities, the president also told the magazine that he’s a little taken aback that voters are disappointed with the current turn of events in his administration. “The mythology has emerged somehow that we ran this flawless campaign, I never made a mistake, that we were master communicators, everything worked in lockstep,” Obama is quoted saying. “That’s not how I look at stuff, because I remember what the campaign was like. And it was just as messy and just as difficult. And there were all sorts of moments when our supporters lost hope, and it looked like we weren’t going to win. And we’re going through that same period here.” The inside-the-White-House account of trouble and turmoil in the administration comes 20 days before the midterm election and is sure to deflate Democrats reluctant to hear the president detailing mistakes from his first 20 months in office. “It’s pretty clear to me based on this interview that the president is saying, ‘I’ve given up, You’re on your own,’” said Democratic strategist Doug Schoen. There’s more at the link . There will be a big difference between what Bill Clinton did after the 1994 election and what Obama is likely to do after this election. Bill Clinton was a professional politician and he understood that in order to have a chance at re-election he would have to moderate his views. His pragmatism allowed him to regain enough of the public’s trust to win a plurality in 1996 and another term in office. Obama, on the other hand, is not a professional politician, but is an ideologue. To him there’s only one way to do thing and that’s to pursue a socialist America without rest. Even a pounding in the midterm election won’t change that. He’ll continue to push a lefty agenda and will hope that blaming Republicans for stopping him will be enough to earn another term. It’s likely to be a very frustrating two years for Obama and the Democrats.
Obama: The Problem is You, Not Me
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on October 14, 2010. Filed under