House of Eratosthenes

What Would Barack Obama’s Approval Rating Look Like Today If He Had Done This?

Imagine this scenario. Barack Obama is elected President and he actually decides to pursue a center-left agenda and work with Republicans.

• He crafts a stimulus package, smaller than the one he has now, but with more tax cuts and all the spending front loaded to 2009. It passes with a significant number of Republican and Democratic votes in the House.

• Obama shoots down the cash-for-clunkers deal. Says that he wants to spur car sales to, but that it’s not responsible for government to spend money like that in a recession.

• Barack Obama wants to let other world leaders know he’s humble, but not servile. So, no there’s no bowing.

• Stanley McChrystal asks for more troops for Afghanistan, a conflict Obama has called a “war of necessity.” Within a week, Obama notes that even though some people in his own party disagree, he’s not going to play politics with the decision — he’s going to give McChrystal his 40,000 troops.

• Obama decides the TARP funds are doing little good, are being misused, and are costing too much. So, he decides not to spend any TARP money beyond holding back a bit of cash to be used to give low interest loans to Chrysler and General Motors after they are finished with bankruptcy court.

• Obama decides Cap and Trade probably can’t pass the Senate and even if it could, it would make little sense to dramatically spike energy costs in the middle of a recession. So, rather than push for it, he says he’s going to wait until the economy is better to push the plan.

• On health care, Obama says that given the budget situation, he can’t justify a huge new program. However, he does want to work with Republicans to set up an insurance pool to cover the roughly 8-10 million Americans who want health care insurance, but can’t afford it. He works with Republican moderates the whole time and passes the bill easily with bipartisan support.

After all that, you tell me, how much higher would Barack Obama’s approval rating be today? How much more popular would Democrats be? How much more fractured would the Republican party be today? Yet, the Democrats could have moved their agenda forward quite a bit. There’s an old saying that applies in situations like this: Pigs get fed, but hogs get slaughtered.

I started on this list and I thought John was going to be summarizing George W. Bush’s presidency from nine years ago. Remember that? Hurt feelings about Florida recount…gravitas…bipartisan this-and-that.

It’s funny how we put pressure on our leaders to be centrist — or not — depending on which side of the “center” they are. You can’t blame them, really, for looking at liberal politics as a convenient shelter from such pressure. Or a constantly flowing wellspring of redemption. Redemption from the guilt that comes from misusing White House interns…pulling our forces out of Southeast Asia so the Khmer Rouge can rip on through and start massacring people…sucking up babies out of their wombs…pouring our hard-earned money into bullshit stimulus and bailout programs…leaving young girls to drown in their sunken cars…making labor more expensive, making fuel more expensive, making energy more expensive, making our annual tax liabilities more expensive, et cetera.

Conservatives are constantly scrutinized to see if they can “get along.” “Reach across.” Forgive and forget. Invite Levi Johnston to Thanksgiving. The redemption that is supposed to come from such things, never comes. Nobody ever looks back again…for example, today’s Thanksgiving, and who knows if Levi Johnston is headed to the Palin household for a belly-full? Or is even trying to find out? I thought so many people were supposed to be curious about it!

They weren’t curious about it. It was just another way to smear.

That’s why the same scrutiny is not applied to liberals. They’ve already demonstrated their “goodness” with their cool, hip, fashionable social policies that don’t work. You might say they “gave at the office.”

But as Hawkins points out, President Obama has been in the position, all year long, to benefit from this much-lauded moderation-of-tone. But the pressure on His Holiness to take advantage of such a thing, was never there. That’s for the other guys. Obviously, He was never advised to do it, so He didn’t do it. It’s not like He knows any better.

Maybe this is why He’ll be a one-termer.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent

Items of Interest

Monthly Archives

What They Say

Links

“Pigs Get Fed, Hogs Get Slaughtered”Thursday, November 26th, 2009

“Pigs Get Fed, Hogs Get Slaughtered”
Thursday, November 26th, 2009