Frank Rich attempted Sunday with this:
All the President’s Captors
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 4, 2010
THOSE desperate to decipher the baffling Obama presidency could do worse than consult an article titled
“Understanding Stockholm Syndrome” in the online archive of The F.B.I. Law Enforcement Bulletin. It explains that hostage takers are most successful at winning a victim’s loyalty if they temper their brutality with a bogus show of kindness. Soon enough, the hostage will start concentrating on his captors’ “good side” and develop psychological characteristics to please them — “dependency; lack of initiative; and an inability to act, decide or think.”
This dynamic was acted out — yet again — in President Obama’s latest and perhaps most humiliating attempt to placate his Republican captors in Washington. No sooner did he invite the G.O.P.’s Congressional leaders to a post-election White House summit meeting than they countered his hospitality with a slap — postponing the date for two weeks because of “scheduling conflicts.” But they were kind enough to reschedule, and that was enough to get Obama to concentrate once more on his captors’ “good side.”
-edit-
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05rich.html?src=me&ref=general**********************
But Rich got it WRONG. A couple of his astute readers got it right, though.
Charles
MA
December 5th, 2010
5:37 am
Frank, you still don't understand. Obama wants pressure from the Republicans.
Republican pressure gives him cover to do what he really wants to do. He has always been a deficit hawk who finds Reagan "transformational" and believes all the Republican myths about trickle-down supply-side economics. From the very beginning of his presidency he has vigorously been doing the work of Wall Street, big pharma, big hospital chains, big insurance, and the rest of corporate America, which he considers his true base. This was obvious even before the inauguration by the Wall Street insiders he chose as his top economic advisors and by the fact that he rejected any large stimulus package and didn't follow the warnings of Romer about the possibility of the stimulus being too small. Yet he blamed the size of the stimulus on the Republicans without even trying to twist their arms, just as he blamed the failure to get a public health insurance option on the Republicans while he himself was actively working in the background to kill the public option. He also worked covertly with Geithner to kill the bipartisan Senate bill that would have reinstated Glass-Steagall, the only bill that has so far appeared that would actually have helped prevent another financial meltdown. The list is long. Obama has never listened to his Dem base, except in the weeks just before the election, and he will continue to take them for granted and believe that David Plouffe, who has now replaced David Axelrod as his chief political advisor, can miraculously persuade the Dem base to go along with him again in 2012.
Frank, please wake up.
You still seem to be deluded that Obama is weak and uncertain. Now take the next step and realize that when Obama doesn't act it's because he doesn't want to act. You are still projecting your ideals on Obama and blaming him for not living up to his falsely-perceived potential because you don't want to admit that your articles during the 2008 primary actually hurt the middle and working classes and now spell disaster for the Dem party, which is realizing that it has a Republican Trojan Horse for its leader.-edit-
5.
Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida
December 5th, 2010
5:37 am
You're very generous to say the President is suffering from Stockholm syndrome. I continue to believe he's a very smart guy who is doing exactly what he wants -- pretending to work for policies that improve the lot of average Americans while he & his chief "negotiators" like Tim Wallstreet Geithner work behind the scenes to help Obama's Oligarch Friends. Call them the OOFs, because with every new move by Obama & Co. it feels to the rest of us as if we've been kicked in the stomach.Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, does a good job of summing up the Obama record:
"To many liberals and progressives, the president's unwillingness to veto any measure that includes continued tax relief for billionaires is the last straw, building on a record of spinelessness that includes his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, abandonment of a public option for health-care reform, refusal to prosecute those who tortured in Iraq or lied us into that war, and unwillingness to tax carbon emissions."Today the President said he was "very disappointed" in the Senate's vote against middle class tax cuts. Actually, a majority of Senators (53) did vote for the tax cuts, but they didn't meet the Senate's special super-majority rule. He says he’s going to "roll up his sleeves" and "redouble" his efforts to get the job done and he's "confident" he can "give the American people peace of mind that their taxes will not go up January 1." Right. And at what price? I'm confident, too. I’m confident he will cave on taxes for the rich. I’m less concerned about the deficit-enhancement which goes with that richy-rich tax cut than I am with the fact that it continues the long march to widen the income divide between the rich & the rest of us. Oh, meanwhile, nothing doing on extending unemployment benefits -- making this the only time in our history when unemployment has been above 7 percent and the Congress has not extended the standard unemployment benefits packages.
Please tell me why anyone would think we have a President and Congress who care about average Americans. Manifestly, the majority do not. Rep. Alan Grayson -- soon to be former Rep. Alan Grayson -- gave a swell performance on the House floor this past week in which he enumerated how much money each of the popular right-wing pundits would make when their friends in Congress extended tax cuts for the rich. What he didn’t add was this: fully a quarter of the members of Congress are millionaires, too, and many of them will personally gain from continuing the tax cuts for the rich.
Meanwhile, the rest of the members are stuffing their campaign coffers – oh, they never quit doing that just because the next election is almost two years away -- with thank-you holiday gifts from their "secret friends," an arrangement made by their not-so-secret friends holding down the right wing of the Supreme Court. Karl Rove & other Bush operatives are gloating over the "tax-cut trap" they laid when they talked Congress into passing "temporary" tax cuts back in 2001. We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it," says Dan Bartlett, Bush's former communications director. "That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth."
Anybody who thinks President Obama and his minions were not fully aware of how the game would play out is suffering from Stockholm syndrome himself. (Sorry, Frank.) President Obama is not a captive of the Republican Guard. He's just playing the role he always intended – publicly telling the voters he’s "very disappointed" so he can pretend he's on our side while privately making Republicans the heavies but giving them what he and they both want. OOF!
The Constant Weader at www.RealityChex.com
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/opinion/05rich.html?sort=recommended
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"Nuf said.
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