John Aravosis was spot-on, early Monday evening, when he stated this about Frank Rich, regarding his latest cover story headlining the October 3rd edition of New York Magazine:
Thank God he's back. Though, Frank is a bona fide member of the Cassandra Club that I, much of the Netroots, and a lot of other people we like, such as Krugman and Stiglitz, belong to as well.
IMHO, these days, there is absolutely no one better than Frank Rich when it comes to providing the most incisive elucidation—and on a more consistent basis—of the oft-frustrated sentiments of the Democratic wing of the U.S. Democratic Party. And, the lead in the October 3rd issue of New York Magazine only reinforces that truth.
Rich opens his piece discussing Rick Perry’s “lightning ascent,” citing it as “…final proof…that a bipartisan consensus in America is as unachievable now as it was after 1964.”
The author states, “This is the harsh reality Obama has been way too slow to recognize.”
In Praise of Extremism
What good did bipartisanship ever do anybody?
Frank Rich
New York Magazine
October 3rd, 2011 (edition)
…in his post–Labor Day “Pass this jobs plan!” speech before Congress, the lip service he characteristically paid to both Republican and Democratic ideas gave way to an unmistakable preference for Democratic ideas. Soon to come were his “Buffett rule” for addressing the inequities of the Bush tax cuts and a threat to veto any budget without new tax revenues to go with spending cuts. When he tied it all up in a Rose Garden mini-tantrum pushing back against the usual cries of “class warfare,” it was enough to give one hope. No, not 2008 fired-up hope, but at least the trace memory of it. Should Obama not cave—always a big if with this president—he might have a serious shot at overcoming the huge burdens of a dark national mood and flatlined economy to win reelection…
…
…That Obama has so long held to his faith that “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America,” as he intoned in his glorious 2004 keynote at the Democratic convention, is in part because that’s who he is. But it’s also because he’s all too susceptible to Washington Establishment groupthink (which is how he was seduced into the jobless Summers-Geithner “recovery” in the first place). From the moment Obama arrived at the White House, the Beltway elites have been coaxing him further down the politically suicidal path of appeasement and inertia even as his opponents geared up for war.
Rich continues on to, among other things, remind readers of the debt-ceiling showdown, where he provides a reference to “…Paul Krugman, who shuns Washington and calls centrism ‘the cult that is destroying America’”…where… “almost every Establishment observer in our own time bought into the magical thinking that the radical Republicans would never go so far as to risk a default of the American government.“
Discussing the President’s efforts to woo independent voters, Rich points to recent polls by the Wall Street Journal–NBC News, as well as Pew, and he tells us: “There’s nothing about the makeup of any segment of these ‘all-important independent voters’ that suggests bipartisan civility has anything whatsoever to do with winning their support. “
…For Obama to pull it out against a slick conservative populist like Perry—or some yet-undeclared Perry alternative who could still emerge to usurp him among the tea-party troops—he cannot revert to his usual ways. Yet as recently as Labor Day, the White House was sending the message, as the Times reported, that it would “rebrand the president as a pragmatic problem solver prepared to set aside ideology.” Rebrand? That is the Obama brand. Surely someone at even this White House must recognize that it is in danger of being recalled by voters because the country’s problems have not been solved.
Obama can’t change his DNA. He is by definition a conciliatory man of the middle: as a black man raised in white America, as a mediator among warring political factions at The Harvard Law Review, as a community organizer, as a child of divorce. But sometimes blacks and whites, liberals and conservatives, and moms and dads cannot reconcile their differences. Sometimes the negotiations and compromises that are the crux of politics are nonoperative. This is one of those times. The other side has no interest in striking grand bargains or even small ones. It wants not so much to reform government, a worthy goal, as to auction off its parts and distribute the proceeds to its corporate backers. It’s a revolution beyond the one even Goldwater or Reagan imagined. They didn’t talk about seceding from the union…
Personally, I think Perry is peaking too soon, and that Rich’s reference to this (i.e.: “…or some yet-undeclared Perry alternative who could still emerge to usurp him among the tea-party troop…”) is actually staring us in the face on the front page of today’s NY Times' website.
In his final words, Rich speaks of those “…who would have Obama surrender without a fight in 2012.” He includes“…White House strategists chasing phantom independents…” as those being among some of the most prominent within that group. Rich closes with this warning, “If Obama succumbs to their siren call again, he will too.“