NO, Mr President! You didn’t screw up! One of the unwritten but well known powers of the presidency is the bully pulpit and to some extent, the visual display of the office (Airforce One, Marine one, etc). There is nothing more that kills the republican spirit than losing that image. Republicans are in general willing to give up anything to hold that office. It is a thing with them. Losing that was devastating, even more than congress. When he went to congress, they felt that he was just a junior senator or something and forgot he was their CIC. The fact that they find such a nice president who is willing to come to them and ask for help made them emboldened (normal people would expect the opposite). Rather than being humble and willing to work together, they shut the door on him completely, zero republican voted for this bill so far.
Obama’s fault, the way I see it, is minor so far but he or his team helped the Repugs make it became huge. For one he took so many things for granted. Being a president is partly being a celebrity, let’s face it. Don’t reach out unless you are sure that you will get something out of it. Less is more.
Go out of Washington DC. Fly Airforce One. Yes it does serve no purpose to the guy who just laid off but it reminds people that he is in charge, as stupid as it seems to many of us here. Image is everything. The public didn’t get the full grasp of the fact that he is actually in the White House. His team is not doing, by Obama’s standard, the best job in projecting that power. They must use him as a last resort not as a first. He should be rare to get to but that is not the case here. The war that is going on right now is PR war. More than half of the public oppose it the bill. Funny thing is neither the public nor congress know what is in the bill. This tells you that somewhere in the chain of PR command, a link is broken.
And what the fuck is this I hear that the phone lines were not working in the WH and the computers are old. Are they really fucking crazy. This is America and it is the freaking WH. Guantanamo prison was built in 90 hours! Don’t tell me they can’t install the damn line and hook up the damn internet, I mean come ON!
My point is that every little mistake Obama makes will be amplified 1000 times and his team must be aware of this and be prepared. Be assertive and don’t say I "screwed up" because lets face it, You DID NOT. You are being humble and we got it. But being too humble is giving the Repukes additional ammo that they will use now or in the future. Remember rush want you to fail. So do Republicans. The difference is, Rush is just honest about it.
UPDATE: Politico Has it
Obama’s campaign was lauded for its visionary use of modern tools for old-fashioned politics. Through the Internet, it recruited supporters, collected dollars, rallied supporters and organized get-out-the vote operations.
But when these modern heroes arrived at the White House, it was like the lights all went out.
Their contact with their millions-fold supporters was cut off, literally, as e-mail systems broke down and ‘The List’ of political supporters was blocked at the iron gate.
To meet government ethics rules, the campaign operation and its grassroots army were forced to de-camp to the Democratic National Committee, robbing the president of one of his most potent political weapons just as the stimulus bill was under consideration in the House.
But while the White House team struggled to adapt, it was business as usual on Capitol Hill for Republicans.
They could practically sleep-walk through their attack plan once House Democrats began to fill in Obama’s broad outlines for a stimulus with a few pet projects of their own.
It required two simple steps: Scream pork, call Rush Limbaugh.