Legal Commentary

The Limits To The Post Partisan Unity Schtick

By Big Tent Democrat

In a rather ridiculous article, the WaPo front pages an opinion as news. The opinion forwarded is:

In his inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." It hasn't taken long for the recriminations to return -- or for the Obama administration to begin talking about the unwelcome "inheritance" of its predecessor.

. . . Upon entering the White House in 2001, Bush pinned the lackluster economy on his predecessor, using the "Clinton recession" to successfully argue in favor of tax cuts that won some Democratic support. But for Obama, who built his candidacy on a promise to rise above Washington's divisive partisan traditions -- winning over many independent voters and moderate Republicans in the process -- blaming his predecessor holds special risks.

This is particularly puerile nonsense. I remind the WaPo of one Bush 2000 phrase - "I am a uniter, not a divider." That said, Obama did engage in the post partisan unity schtick, thus inviting this nonsensical line of attack. More . .

At the end of the day, Republicans, either for political reasons or for principled reasons, are not going to agree with much of President Obama's agenda. It is ridiculous to expect that they will. We have two political parties for a reason. Did anyone really expect the Republicans to go along with the Obama agenda? If so, why? I've argued this point ad nauseum - the political fortunes of President Obama and the Democratic Party will lie in the results they achieve while in control of the Presidency and the Congress. The Republican Party stands in political ruins now because of the utter failure of the policies of President Bush and the Republican Congress during his Administration. Not because they were "partisan."

To the degree President Obama and Democrats are sniping at the mess they inherited, I believe it is mostly geared towards fighting the political fight for enacting his agenda. As the WaPo article notes:

Obama's more frequent and acid reminders that former president George W. Bush left behind a trillion-dollar budget deficit, a 14-month recession and a broken financial system have come at the same time Republicans have ramped up criticism that the current president's policies are compounding the nation's economic problems. . . . Obama has strengthened his rhetoric gradually. Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said the administration's "sharpened language is a response to the Republican argument against Obama based on huge deficits and big spending."

Of course this was always going to end up here. Only silly people like this person quoted in the WaPo story could have thought otherwise:

"What the administration is involved in now is the politics of attribution," said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. "Each week that goes by with falling job numbers and Republican criticism of the administration's flaws means falling approval ratings. What's the antidote? That the guilty party is George Bush." "The trick," Jacobs said, "is how do you shift blame to George Bush and retain any credibility on the idea that you are looking past partisan warfare? This looks like a doubling down on a very partisan approach."

Apparently Jacobs is a political scientist. I assume he has been studying the politics of some other country. "Doubling down?" There have been 44 President of the United States. At least 43 of them (I exempt George Washington) engaged in partisan politics. I hate this silly tsk-tsking.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 14, 2009 (boomark / email).