Sunday punditry, with a twist of revolution.
Frank Rich:
That First 100 Days hoopla seems like a century ago. The countless report cards it engendered are already obsolete. The real story begins now. With Iran, universal health care, energy reform and the economic recovery all on the line, the still-new, still-popular president’s true tests are about to come.
Here’s one thing Barack Obama does not have to worry about: the opposition. Approval ratings for Republicans hit an all-time low last week in both the New York Times/CBS News and Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls. That’s what happens when a party’s most creative innovations are novel twists on old-fashioned sex scandals.
Michael Gerson: Count me in as another fighting keyboarder who demands Obama side with freedom fighters at risk for getting themselves killed.... from my living room. When I was with the Bush administration, look how effective we were in using "Freedom" in every speech. Stop listening to dinosaurs like Kissinger, and get out there and agitate.
Roger Cohen [added]:
Khamenei has taken a radical risk. He has factionalized himself, so losing the arbiter’s lofty garb, by aligning himself with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against both Mir Hussein Moussavi, the opposition leader, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a founding father of the revolution.
George Will: Obama is attempting to use health reform to destroy insurance companies. I can prove it by pointing to rabid anti-insurance picks like Tom Daschle and Katherine Sebelius. And by fudging the uninsured to make them look feckless and transient. And by making reform go away with tax credits. And by using Occam's Razor. Of course, Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is that I don't understand the topic.
Nicholas Kristof:
I’ve often criticized America’s health care system, and I fervently hope that we’re going to see a public insurance option this year. But one reason for our health problems is our industrialized agriculture system, and that should be under scrutiny as well.
Maureen Dowd: The media has two kinds of reporters: The ones who prefer to think of themselves as gifted but human, and the ones who think they are on a date night with Joseph Pulitzer. The latter like to write about flies, and stretch metaphors like a rubber band.
Tom Friedman: So will the Iranian revolution succeed? Darned if I know. Give it six months: That's always worked for me.
Jonathan Capehart:
Despite Obama's political bungling, he is not an enemy of gay and lesbian civil rights.
David Broder: Obama is lucky there's no alternative. Congressional republicans are useless. That's why I am for bipartisanship in every way.