In Sunday's The New York Times, David Sanger wrote:
"Let’s face it, [Barack Obama]’s failed in the effort to be the nonpolarizing president, the one who can use rationality and calm debate to bridge our traditional divides," said Peter Beinart, a liberal essayist who is publishing a history of hubris in politics. "It turns out he’s our third highly polarizing president in a row. But for his liberal base, it confirms that they were right to believe in the guy — and they had their doubts.
Although Beinart has come to regret the cheerleading he did for the Iraq invasion, he keeps selling himself as a liberal despite having trouble actually being a liberal. Perhaps his new book coming out in June will address that gap.
digby put her keyboard to work demolishing Beinart's latest nonsense:
The last three presidents have been polarizing? I suppose you could put it that way. The other, more accurate, way to put it is to admit that the Republican party has gone batshit insane and so the country is polarized between their freakshow and the normal people.
Clinton ran as a centrist and governed as one and the Republicans impeached him for his trouble. Landslide Bush turned the executive branch into an imperial office, invaded countries without reason and tortured people. I suppose you could call that "polarizing" but perhaps it's more accurate to say he was a manifestation of his political party --- which is, as mentioned, batshit insane. Obama just passed a market friendly health care bill that was originally proposed by Bob Dole, largely against the will of the left. And the right wing, as usual, is apoplectic to the point of near mass insanity.
It's not like the two Democratic presidents of the three did anything that can logically be construed as so liberal that the other side can't support them. It's simply that Republicans believe no Democrat can possibly have a legitimate claim to the presidency at all. ...
Beinert has been making this ridiculous claim for a couple of weeks now so I assume he's developed this cracked thesis for his book in which he will claim that Obama, in an act of sheer "hubris," decided to govern as a radical left winger in defiance of the country's clear desire for a post-partisan healer.
If only it were true.
[See also Bob Johnson's exquisite takedown of Beinart.]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:
I wrote at length last week about how Democrats are haunted by the ghost of accountability, how they still believe that genuine investigations somehow still thrive in this toxic Republican congress. Since then, Senator Durbin and other Democrats have said they aren't ruling out censure, but want to wait for the investigation to be completed. To that, I ask, what investigation? There's an investigation being conducted into the President's illegal spying program? News to me. I thought the Senate Intelligence Cover-Up Committee voted to not conduct an inquiry. Oh! Oh! I know. I think they are referring to what the "subcommittee" that was set up in lieu of a real investigation. Are Democrats waiting for an "investigation" from the subcommittee Chairman Roberts called "an accommodation with the White House"? And how long, pray tell, will this "investigation" take?