There Is No Plan

Obama was forceful enough tonight to make it clear that the GOP has to make a choice. Putting aside the details of the plan – which could have been more focused – If the GOP in Congress block the Obama jobs plan, Obama will do his best to tar them with ownership of the crisis. If they don’t, they’re handing the President a victory, and an election boost next year. What they’ll probably do is to employ a version of their standard “accept with unacceptable conditions”. That could muddy the waters just enough to parry Obama’s otherwise quality political move.

There’s one other problem here. The President is going head to head with a GOP House majority that revels in its lack of national popularity, whereas the President requires national popularity to be reelected. It’s an unfair fight in that respect, because the GOP’s Presidential candidates escape with little if any collateral damage.

i want to be loved...

Obama is leading like a President who wants to be loved. In case he hasn’t noticed, he’s about as loved and admired as anyone can be without levitating.

It’s time to try something a little different. Like leading.

This morning the President announced that he’d ordered the EPA to ‘review’ the block on California’s strict emission regulations.

Everybody knows what that review is going to do. It’s going to remove the block on California’s strict emission regulations. By delaying he just gives his enemies a chance to rally their lobbyists.

Last week, Obama met with GOP house leaders and asked for their input on the economic stimulus package.

Everyone knew what was going to happen. The GOP did give Obama their input. It consisted of a single finger. With America on the brink in so many respects, we really don’t have time to chit chat, especially with a Republican party that’s on the verge of marginalizing itself. What they say isn’t important. We need to ignore them. That will make them look even more truculent and outmoded than ever.

The trend here is simple. Obama wants his enemies to be his friends. That’s very sweet, but it’s going to get frustrating real fast.

I’ve been hearing an awful lot of talk these days about how Obama is using bipartisanship as a Trojan horse to get good policies through the quagmire.

Not going to work. There isn’t a quagmire. We run the show. With the help of Senators Spector, Collins, and Snowe, and a strong whip in the Senate, we have total filibuster-proof control. The days when preventing the tyranny of the majority are gone. Bipartisanship is only good when the other side agree to what you want to do your way.

Now is not the time for offering compromises. We won. They lost. It’s our turn to lead. And if the people don’t like it. They can vote us out next time.

It’s called democracy.

I once directed a feature film. The experience taught me more about leadership than anything I’ve ever done. These are the rules; 1. Keep your mouth shut unless it matters. 2. Be decisive. 3. Keep it brief. 4. Never ask for advice. Keep your game face on. 5. Forget about being liked.

Great film directors are not nice people on set.

Presidents are always on set.

there's no place like home

History has a habit of surprising us. Rarely, have so many disparate causalities clashed so profoundly, so quickly, as they are now. The world is at a crossroads for a multitude of reasons, and stepping into the gauntlet to face it all is President Barack Obama.

Elected, in the eyes of many, as an agent of change, it’s beginning to seem hard to believe that he can still be that agent. It’s as if all the stirring rhetoric for which he has become quickly famous will soon be lost in an almost janitorial drudgery of merely cleaning up the mess that is the modern world. The dream of change that he offered us was not a matter of damage limitation, but on just about all fronts, both at home and abroad this is what Obama is presented with. But looking back to our past might once again provide us with the path to the future. Read the rest of this entry »