Remember back in the primaries when Hillary Clinton made fun of Barack Obama? It was Providence R.I. in February 2008. She was tired of the "magical" thinking of the Obama campaign:
"Now I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified. The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect.’
"Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear," she said.
Hillary knew all about "bipartisanship". She lived through the Clinton administration. This was a time when Republicans would attach -gate (filegate, travelgate, etc.) to virtually every action either Clinton had ever taken.
It was the 1988 election that showed the Republicans the way. Many remember the Willie Horton ads, but there were other scum-laden actions.
During the election, a number of allegations were made in the media about Dukakis's personal life, including the unsubstantiated claim that Dukakis's wife Kitty had burned an American flag to protest the Vietnam War, and that Dukakis himself had been treated for a mental illness. In the film Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story, Robert Novak reveals for the first time that Atwater personally called him to spread these mental health rumors.
[May Atwater & Novak share an especially hot spot in hell]...
So when the Clintons were later accused of murdering Vince Foster it couldn't have come as much of a surprise...Well, you know the rest...
Now let's fast-forward to 2009. Barack Obama (apparently) continues to cling to the fantasy of bipartisanship --- even AFTER the dirty tricks have come out. Nazi, Socialist, Fascist, Racist...all the usual Rethuglican favorites are here for all to see.
Remember when Barack Obama knew it all? He told us the Clintons were the OLD way of doing business in Washington. Barack seemed to blame the Clintons as much as the Republicans for the nasty partisanship of the 1990s. Barack knew a better way. If we elected Barack everything would be different. He would explain everything with sweet Harvard Law reason, and, surely the Republicans would see the light and join in.
Well, the evidence is in. Hillary was right and Barack was wrong. It is not even a close call. So what is Barack going to do about it now? How can he go back on one of the main themes of his campaign? If he goes for health-care reconciliation, he's admitting that Hillary was right, and that he doesn't ACTUALLY know everything -- that his powers of persuasion are limited. If he doesn't admit it, he might not get health care reform at all.
Maybe he just made up all that sweet-reason babble to get elected. Well, it worked beautifully. I don't even want to consider the possibility that BHO was actually naive enough to believe in this stuff...
Unless he is willing to admit that Hillary was right, he may destroy his own Presidency.
Notes:
- I proudly voted for Barack Obama in 2008 [lest ye think otherwise].
- I am glad HRC lost. BHO was a better candidate and the Dem. landslide was bigger than it would have been with HRC.
- If HRC had won, and this current health-care mess had happened, can you IMAGINE what would be going on in the liberal blogosphere? Hillary would be Hitler, Stalin and Mao rolled into one.
- If I was a nasty fellow, I would be enjoying the fact that Obama is governing almost exactly as Hillary would have. But that would be wrong {:-0)...
- Isn't "reconciliation" an ironic term? This sweet-sounding term actually means stomping the face of the minority in the Senate. This is a word George Carlin would have loved.