A surfeit of bloviation

What a spectacle we’re getting from the white guys who marched in lockstep behind W as he ran up historic budget deficits by throwing twin tsunamis of cash up at the rich and down into the toilet of the Iraq war. Now all we hear from the perfectly coifed Repubs is the horrible sin of spending money you don’t have and the pressing need to ‘defend future generations’ from the nightmare of national debt. Why not throw in fetuses as well? Nefarious liberals: cynically placing the lives of the pre-born in hock to big gummint.

Given this hyper-partisan resistance, it’s not immediately apparent what Obama gains by his polite attempts to make nice and cede to Republican demands here and there. At first glance—and aided by the woo-wooing of the punditocracy—he looks alternately weak or upstaged.

Witnessing the lack of cooperation, one begins to speculate on the counterfactual: what if he had just burst into office with both barrels blazing and sent up bold, Rooseveltian measures to reshuffle the deck, reenfranchise the middle class and restore the safety net for the poor? Why not if they’re going to be against everything anyway? That’s how W proceeded after his bogus ‘compassionate conservative’ campaign even with a negative electoral mandate.

But Obama’s appeal and winning formula was always supra-partisan, and he seems to believe in the other Roosevelt’s approach (Eleanor’s): if you clearly (and patiently) explain to people what is in their best interest, they will respond. She was living in another age mediawise where the soundbite did not yet rule, but even so it’s an interesting and rather radical concept. And Obama now can soundbite right back.

John McCain looked particularly pathetic as he lethargically denounced the spending package from the Senate floor. This is the superhero who flew through the air during the campaign with A Plan To Save Us, which turned out to be nothing but himself in tights.

Given how wrong the commentators were about everything over the last two years, now’s a good time to sit back and actually see what happens rather than claim you can predict it.