There's this thing I've been noticing over the past few weeks - since the election, actually, and it's a good thing.
I remember clearly the anger when Clinton was elected, after twelve years of Republican control of the White House. People were declaring loudly and on TV that he "was not their president." The opposition went to work immediately (while then President-Elect Clinton went on a five-week vacation) to undermine him and his authority. It certainly didn't help that he won by a plurality, not a majority, with Perot taking votes away from George HW Bush (I tend to call him Bush père).
And I, of course, was angry after the 2000 election, when Bush fils was voted in by the Supreme Court. Like many Democrats, I felt like my choice had been entirely taken away, and it boded ill for the country to be run by someone who would steal an election. If he had no respect for that, would he have respect for anything else?
We all know the answer to that question. Of course, Gore didn't accede to pressure to concede until mid-December, just before the electors voted, so there was no time for Bush to do anything but form a cabinet, and since the Republicans had the House and Senate, there was little the Democrats could do to undermine him if they were in a mind to do so.
By the time they regained Congress in the aftermath of the war and Katrina, the rules had been changed so that a party needed a supermajority in the Senate to get anything done.
So, you'd expect that the Republicans would now be doing everything in their power to undermine Obama, to eliminate his "honeymoon", to show that he will wreck the country.
But they haven't been. They are talking about working with him, about supporting him, about the fact that he's EVERYONE'S president. They've been doing this since the election - sometimes I wasn't sure if the strategist on the screen were Democratic or Republican.
Even now, when the scandal in Illinois seems to be handing the Republicans a chance on a silver platter - well, I just saw an interview on MSNBC where the anchor tried to get an Republican Illinois congressman to equate Obama with Blagojevich, and he wouldn't do it. He flatly refused - Obama is not involved. I think she also managed to get a man with the courage of his convictions (rare in any party) who didn't like corruption no matter what the party - he doesn't want Bush to pardon the currently incarcerated Republican former governor of Illinois, either.
But it's all of a piece of what I've been seeing since November. The insiders (not the bloggers) have been gracious losers, and that's not normal for politicians of any stripe. So I suspect something - something good.
I think that the Republican leadership has sent the word down to support Obama, to give him the nation he talked about during his campaign. And they're doing it because the country is in bad shape, with the economy falling apart and two expensive wars, and having a president who has to fight those things *and* them is ultimately bad for the country.
That is, the true leadership of the Republicans actually does care. This can be John McCain, who I believe showed his true stripes during his concession speech, or it can be Bush père, but I don't think it's anyone in the Bush fils administration. And if that's the case, I am feeling better about the future - people who agree that the country's needs are paramount can work together even if they agree on little else.
I'm not sure the Democrats would have been as adult in the opposite case, but I surely hope so.
I remember clearly the anger when Clinton was elected, after twelve years of Republican control of the White House. People were declaring loudly and on TV that he "was not their president." The opposition went to work immediately (while then President-Elect Clinton went on a five-week vacation) to undermine him and his authority. It certainly didn't help that he won by a plurality, not a majority, with Perot taking votes away from George HW Bush (I tend to call him Bush père).
And I, of course, was angry after the 2000 election, when Bush fils was voted in by the Supreme Court. Like many Democrats, I felt like my choice had been entirely taken away, and it boded ill for the country to be run by someone who would steal an election. If he had no respect for that, would he have respect for anything else?
We all know the answer to that question. Of course, Gore didn't accede to pressure to concede until mid-December, just before the electors voted, so there was no time for Bush to do anything but form a cabinet, and since the Republicans had the House and Senate, there was little the Democrats could do to undermine him if they were in a mind to do so.
By the time they regained Congress in the aftermath of the war and Katrina, the rules had been changed so that a party needed a supermajority in the Senate to get anything done.
So, you'd expect that the Republicans would now be doing everything in their power to undermine Obama, to eliminate his "honeymoon", to show that he will wreck the country.
But they haven't been. They are talking about working with him, about supporting him, about the fact that he's EVERYONE'S president. They've been doing this since the election - sometimes I wasn't sure if the strategist on the screen were Democratic or Republican.
Even now, when the scandal in Illinois seems to be handing the Republicans a chance on a silver platter - well, I just saw an interview on MSNBC where the anchor tried to get an Republican Illinois congressman to equate Obama with Blagojevich, and he wouldn't do it. He flatly refused - Obama is not involved. I think she also managed to get a man with the courage of his convictions (rare in any party) who didn't like corruption no matter what the party - he doesn't want Bush to pardon the currently incarcerated Republican former governor of Illinois, either.
But it's all of a piece of what I've been seeing since November. The insiders (not the bloggers) have been gracious losers, and that's not normal for politicians of any stripe. So I suspect something - something good.
I think that the Republican leadership has sent the word down to support Obama, to give him the nation he talked about during his campaign. And they're doing it because the country is in bad shape, with the economy falling apart and two expensive wars, and having a president who has to fight those things *and* them is ultimately bad for the country.
That is, the true leadership of the Republicans actually does care. This can be John McCain, who I believe showed his true stripes during his concession speech, or it can be Bush père, but I don't think it's anyone in the Bush fils administration. And if that's the case, I am feeling better about the future - people who agree that the country's needs are paramount can work together even if they agree on little else.
I'm not sure the Democrats would have been as adult in the opposite case, but I surely hope so.
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2 comments:
Well, if it's real, and if it lasts into his actual administration, then it's wonderful, and I'm very glad about it. I'm not crazy about the fact that it took this much of a crisis to get everyone on the same page, but hopefully the fact that everything works so much better this way will mean that it doesn't go away when things start to improve.
Wish I could share this afterglow, but I can see the spin machine ramping up. Expect investigations into his place of birth, his relationship with a certain Chicago slumlord and whatever mess is going on with the present governor of Illinois to play into Obama's "whitewater."
The chances are slim, however, that they will have the opportunity to assign him his own personal dybbuk the way they assigned Ken Starr to Clinton.
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