Hey, suck my bipartisan wiener
Here's the thing, and I think even the dumbarse greedheads at the WSJ get this: Reagan, and Bush too, talked about reaching across the aisle, not assuming they had a mandate to do what they want, consultation etc, and then just rammed through whatever of their agenda they could, with a lockstep party behind everything they did.Obama's problem with doing the same is not that he insists on actually meaning it, but that he doesn't have the unquestioning backing of his party. He's aware as any of us that there isn't going to be any "bipartisanship" and that appointing Republicans to his cabinet is just window dressing (and at that, Judd turned out to be more honest than Republicans usually are, and admitted that he would be too tempted to sabotage Obama's agenda -- I think Obama chose him wisely: a vain, puffed-up tard who would not end up taking the role; I think Obama's "bipartisanship" consists of making it look like he's trying to include the Repugnicunts, while being well aware that they won't play nice).
Hayward is half right though in this:
This is a lesson in the character of the two parties. The Democratic Party has been, at least since the Nixon years, a predominantly congressional party, finely honing the means of running the iron triangle of interest groups, bureaucracy and spending. This is why Presidents Carter and Clinton came to grief with their own party in Congress, and why the more executive-minded Republican Party generally presents better examples of presidential leadership.
Republicans are authoritarians. They line up behind teh Leader. Democrats are, well, democrats.
The Republican Party doesn't present better examples of presidential leadership; it presents better examples of followers.
posted by Dr Zen @ 12:18 pm
4 Comments:
Isn't Judd a Republican Senator whose seat would have likely been replaced by a Democrat (appointed by a Democrat Governor) thus giving the Dems a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate?
Call me cynical, but I think it was originally a brilliant strategic move by Obama, not necessarily a generous act of by-partisanship.
And rather than withdrawing out of a sense of fairness to Obama, Judd was probably threatened into submission -- forced to refuse the position, by the usual smear mongers.
You are wrong on both counts, and I never said he intended to be fair to Obama.
On the first, he had a deal with Obama and the governor that he would be replaced by a Republican.
On the second, he may have been pressured by the Repugnant Party but he likely just realised the ridiculousness of being a commerce secretary in an administration whose policies on commerce he could not support and remain Repugnant. I think Obama probably knew that and that's why he was in commerce and not somewhere where ideology has less of a part to play.
You are wrong on both counts
Oh well.
Two for two.
A perfect score.
boots sez:
Political parties are mechanisms to help ensure that the government will proceed along predictable lines after the inevitable and near-immediate brain-death of those elected to comprise it.
Or perhaps they're ways of saying don't look at me, it isn't my fault that I'm supporting idiocy, they made me do it.
They're certainly effective at taking the thought out of the process and replacing it with team-interest.
Who's your team? MY team is the greatest. I'll fight for my team.
Fucking idiocy.
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