The Times Has It Wrong on Obama

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Getty Images The paper's argument that the president is a sellout ignores the fact that he's only caved on things no one knew he cared about in the first place, like farm subsidies.

Is Obama selling out his supporters? Such an article would pretty much write itself about any elected official. After all, as Mario Cuomo once put it, “We campaign in poetry, but govern in prose.” Even so, The New York Times treated us to the front-page news that our president was a sellout, even as it also admitted that it was somehow “inevitable” that Obama would be able to live up to his “bold proposals” and “lofty pledge[s]” of campaigns gone by.

It’s not hard, when you’re calling from The New York Times, to get “experts” to agree with your thesis, however flimsy.

Then again, what The Times first and second paragraphs taketh, the third paragraph giveth back. “Mr. Obama has not conceded on any major priority.” In fact, the only things its reporters find that Obama has caved on are things nobody knew he cared about in the first place. For instance, we learn that “Congressional Democrats effectively killed his proposal to slash farm subsidies by nearly $1 billion a year, and forced him to retreat partially on a plan to require private insurers to pick up more of veterans’ health costs. They also got him to shelve the idea of a commission to buttress Social Security’s finances. And Thursday, Mr. Obama suggested that he would not fight in Congress to renew an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004.”

Let’s take these one by one. First off, did anyone actually vote for Obama, as opposed to either Hillary, Edwards, or McCain, because of his pledge to slash farm subsidies? I mean, it would have been nice, but… (And since when is having your proposal “effectively killed” the equivalent of “a willingness to capitulate?”) Ditto, on the private insurers paying more of veterans’ health care costs. Did that even come up during the campaign? And finally, the Social Security commission thing. I watched the election pretty carefully. Did I go to the bathroom during that part?

It’s not hard, when you’re calling from The New York Times, to get “experts” to agree with your thesis, however flimsy. Interestingly, the guy chosen by the Times reporters for this front-page shocker is unknown to me, and I’m guessing to you, too. “The thing we still don’t know about him is what he is willing to fight for,” said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. “The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy.”

Ruhhly, is there anything to this story at all?

Actually, according to its authors, perhaps not. They admit that “The extent to which he is willing to yield to lobbyists, Congressional committee leaders and interest groups, however, will be determined as the White House tackles health care and other big issues on a list that seems to grow: Immigration, for instance, is now in the mix.” They give Rahm Emanuel the opportunity to make the opposite case that “we’ve taken on a series of entrenched interests across the waterfront—from education to health care, and the defense industry, and the lobbying industry as a whole.” And there are those anonymous “allies” who point to “his winning the second $350 billion in financial bailout money from a reluctant Congress; a pay-equity law for women; expanded government health insurance for children, including—at his insistence—legal immigrant children; and the $787 billion economic recovery bill that reached his desk, as demanded, by mid-February.” And they further admit that these fights “may end up looking easy compared with the fight on health care, which will most likely require him to stand up to hospitals, doctors, insurance companies and their patrons in Congress. He might have to finance the plan in a way that raises costs for the middle class, perhaps by taxing employer-provided health benefits—an idea he attacked in the campaign.”

So again, what do they have to support their front-page thesis of an allegedly cajones-less presidency? Well, finally we get to the point: “Facing Democratic opposition in Congress, the White House seems prepared to give up on several tax proposals, including a limit on deductions that the wealthiest taxpayers can claim for charitable donations and state and local taxes, which was supposed to help pay for health-care legislation—raising doubts about how the president will finance it.”

There’s that weasel word again: “seems.” Remember journalists use the word “seems” when they want to make stuff up. Perhaps it’s true, but the reporters in question offer not a shred of evidence to support it. And they don’t have to because they said “seems.” (“Seems, madam? Nay it is. I know not seems,” said a wise media critic and a fictional Prince of Denmark.)

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April 20, 2009 | 5:50am

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Angellight

GOP operatives (Party of No and Darkness), are now criticizing Pres. Obama because he showed strength of character and decency by not engaging in a school yard brawl with leaders who are supposed to be engaging in Dipolomacy! This is leading by example rather than getting petty and in the gutter with leaders who were allegedly disrespectful to the U.S. Those leaders are the ones who looked weak and ignorant, not Pres. Obama. GOP says to stay calm and positive is weak, but to be strong one must get angry and blown out of proportion like a leaf in the wind when one is provoked. I say rather that it shows strength to maintain one's position of calmness to stay fixed in one's position to be a peacemaker and to show others and the world that the U.S. President does not get down in the gutter when others are throwing barbs at him and it shows Discipline. GOP claim "he allowed himself to be Disrespected"! How could one allow themselves to be disrespected, however, Pres. Obama could himself have become disrespectful to others and made the U.S. look bad if he had engaged in tit for tat, but that is the old way, and Change has come to the U.S. We know longer have a Cowboy in the whitehouse, but a peacemaker and diplomat who shows us that we do not have to get angry when others get angry with us. We don't have to get that way!

Yesterday, while watching Pastor Charles Stanley who preached on staying silent in the face of evil, and that we had to show the strength of character that Jesus Christ did when confronted with enemies and confrontation -- that is to be silent and not engage in the confrontation but to stay responsible with the response given in the face of such challenges!

That is what Pres. Obama did -- who continued to radiate the energy of goodwill and kept his cool in the face of childishness adversity and really showed leadership qualities and also emulated Christ's teachings....., the teachings the GOP frequently profess they live by. Really?

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The Times Has It Wrong on Obama

The Times Has It Wrong on Obama