{"id":284599,"date":"2010-02-05T23:08:49","date_gmt":"2010-02-06T04:08:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=65447"},"modified":"2010-02-05T23:08:49","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T04:08:49","slug":"late-night-how-not-to-be-%e2%80%9cseen%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/284599","title":{"rendered":"Late Night: How Not to be \u201cSeen\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I said this last week<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The White House has spent this last year insulating the president from the grit and grime of the health reform battle, thinking that if Obama stayed above the fray, he would be seen as more presidential\u2014or at least would retain that \u201cnew car smell\u201d and those lofty approval numbers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And this week, it seems more and more people are noticing\u2014or, perhaps, more accurately, they noticed a long time ago, but now they feel more comfortable talking about it.<\/p>\n

Take, for instance, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who told Sam Stein<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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The president was weighing in pretty heavily on the discussions between the House and Senate before the Massachusetts special [Senate] election–it’s dried up since.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Or the Democratic source that told Chris Frates at Politico<\/a> that during a Thursday meeting between the Democratic caucus and Obama:<\/p>\n

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Pelosi expressed frustration with the pace of progress and the president’s decision not to weigh in publicly on a way forward, according to the source.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are also similar leaks and statements about frustrations expressed by Senators Franken (D-MN) and Sanders (I-VT).<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-OR), appearing earlier tonight on The Ed Show, who was even more explicit:<\/p>\n

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The White House has really checked out of this debate\u2014I mean, they have not been directive. I mean, the president came to our caucus and in response to one member said he supported the public option. Well that\u2019s great, but where was the bully pulpit in support of the public option? . . . I haven\u2019t seen them deliver at all in this debate. Remember, they started by cutting a deal with the Pharmaceutical industry\u2014couldn\u2019t have been a worse start.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But, in contrast, President Obama made a series of public stops yesterday where he made a point of urging Congress, like he did in his State of the Union, to pass health care legislation. Publicly engaging (after months of what many complained was an obvious absence from the debate) while privately stepping away. Is that a strategy for getting real health care reform, or is that a strategy for getting reelected?<\/p>\n

I know what the White House is thinking, but I\u2019ve got news for them: Not only will leaving Congress to \u201cget it done\u201d all by themselves\u2014leaving the House to try to figure out some way to pressure the Senate into making sensible, productive changes\u2014not produce a quality reform bill (or any bill at all), the president will not be insulated from the failure.<\/p>\n

I expect the political team at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. thinks that it might be a win-win. Either they get to sign a bill, no matter how ineffectual, and call it a victory, or they don\u2019t get a bill, and can blame obstructionists in Congress or the flawed process during this year\u2019s elections (and 2012, too). But it\u2019s not going to go down that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s John Nichols from the same Ed Show segment:<\/p>\n

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[T]he American people don\u2019t care what a filibuster is, they don\u2019t care what cloture is\u2014there\u2019s a new pew center poll that says that they don\u2019t even know what those things are\u2014what they care about is whether their kids, whether their parents, whether they have health care. And if the Democrats don\u2019t get this\u2014I start with Barack Obama, nobody gets off the hook, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the whole Democratic Party\u2014if they don\u2019t get that the issue is health care, not Senate rules, they are going to be beaten awfully badly this fall. They may not lose all their majorities, but they will lose their ability to function, and, in so doing, they will have sacrificed their ability to set this country right, that isn\u2019t just bad politics, that\u2019s bad morality.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The White House still does not seem to understand this, but it looks like many in Congress (such as those quoted above) now do. After a year of avoiding the spotlight\u2014letting Congress work out their health reform plans in public while cutting his own deals in private\u2014the president now tries to appear engaged in front of the cameras while trying hard not to have a hand in either a failed effort or the breaking of some of his secret deals behind the scenes. Instead of \u201cThe buck stops here,\u201d Obama is positioning himself for \u201cIt\u2019s not my fault.\u201d From “agent of change” to “victim of circumstance.\u201d Is that really how the president wants voters to think of him in November of 2010 or 2012? Is that really how he wants to be seen?<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a>\n<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said this last week: The White House has spent this last year insulating the president from the grit and grime of the health reform battle, thinking that if Obama stayed above the fray, he would be seen as more presidential\u2014or at least would retain that \u201cnew car smell\u201d and those lofty approval numbers. And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4839,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-284599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4839"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}