Thursday, February 05, 2009

like 1993 all over again

Obama hasn't even been in the Oval Office a month, and I am beginning to see Bill Clinton's disasterous beginning repeated.

I read George Sephanopolis' book "All too human" this summer and was struck by how many early mistakes the Clinton Administration made and how that limited their ability to get their agenda through. Some was self-made stupidity like making an off-hand comment about gays in the military and letting it spin out of control during the transition, then handing the keys over to Colin Powell on the issue. But many were Republican made, like "nanny-gate" that did in many designates for cabinet posts.

16 years later, it was bad tax filings. Not that Republicans made these nominees file erroneous taxes or hire illegal aliens for nannies, but that in the overall picture, these issues are not that important to these candidates qualifications. And the true goal in both situations was not to get a better qualified nominee, but to make the new Democratic President look bad and weaken him.

Republicans remember 1994 and 2002, the lesson they learned was not to compromise with Democrats and the American voter will reward them.

Obama needs to learn the lesson of 2005, if you stand up and ask what the American people think, you can stop silliness like social security privitization. He has high approval ratings and a large majorit of people want this stimulous bill done NOW not in general, so press your case Mr. President.

1 comment:

rmwarnick said...

Do you watch "Morning Joe" on MSNBC? Joe Scarborough really thinks this is a repeat of 1993, like when he was in Congress. He's loving it.