Reply #40: Obama shouldn't have urged, he should have done something back then, too.

[jobycom]

Obama never took the lead or took charge of the tax cuts before the election. He gave a speech calling on Congress to pass the middle class tax cuts first, and then to debate about the upper income cuts. It was naive and silly at the time--a good first shot in a battle, but he never engaged in the battle. Everyone knew the Republicans and significant numbers of Democrats weren't going to do that on their own free will, because the middle class cuts were all the Republicans had to bargain with. Congress didn't have the votes to pass the middle class cuts without the upper class cuts, and Obama didn't have the whatever to work Congress to get the votes. That was a failure on all their parts, Obama's included.

But that's history. The debate now is what to do now. Obama has once again failed to do anything significant, and has in addition crippled his party in Congress from doing anything. If he had been president in the 90s, Gingrich would have gotten his rollback budget and his Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage, and I guess some Vichy Democrats would support him for it. If he had been president in the 60s we'd have never gotten Civil Rights passed. Being president means working your party and working Congress to get what you want done. Obama is smart enough, and he's good enough when there's general agreement to get a consensus issue past, and he's even smart enough to be good on the details when he's working out his ideas. But he's not a leader. He can't win anything contested. He can't stand up to the opposition. He can't say no. He's an easy mark.

If he doesn't learn how to fight and how to politic, he's going to give away everything they want, including the White House in 2012. This is not a good compromise from him, and not good timing, and not a good way to handle it. He turned the cannons on his own forces and fired, and now he's confused as to why their scattering.