Time for more audacity?
President Barack Obama is taking heavy fire from the left this week. Comedian and liberal spokesmensch Bill Maher declared, “This is not what I voted for.”
“If you can’t shove some real reform down [the Republican Party’s] throats now — when?” he asked.
EJ Dionne argued in the Washington Post today that Obama’s healthcare reform has already incorporated too many Republican priorities without winning any conservative support.
As it is, President Obama and the Democrats have already compromised a great deal. They are not proposing a government takeover of health-care financing, as single-payer advocates prefer. Instead, they are working within the confines of current arrangements.
Dionne calls bipartisanship “a trap.”
The NY Times, meanwhile, is running with a think-piece this morning that compares Obama (unfavorably) to Franklin Roosevelt — who is sketched as far more bold and decisive.
Three quarters of a century ago, President Franklin Roosevelt earned the undying enmity of Wall Street when he used his enormous popularity to push through a series of radical regulatory reforms that completely changed the norms of the financial industry. Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care.
Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered.
Obama has also drawn mixed reviews for his muted response to the turmoil in Iran.
And he’s infuriated gay and lesbian groups for backpedaling on his campaign promise to end the military’s “Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell” policy. (A boycott is spreading, with gay donors declining to give to Democratic candidates.)
So what do you think? As we approach the half-year mark for Mr. Obama’s presidency, is it time for him to swing for the fence on SOMETHING?
Do we want the President to show more spunk? More conviction? Or is his steady-as-she-goes, temperate style a good thing in these tumultuous times?
