No disrespect to the Dowd or Collins, though I find the latter much less a grandstander than the former.
Wednesday night’s address on health care reform was inspired, lucid and, in the literally and figuratively Kennedyesque finale, moving. It was also (mildly) partisan, a trait much deplored by high-minded editorial writers but in real life quite useful when your party is in the majority and you want to rally the troops to get something done. But there was little in the speech that Obama couldn’t have said at the summer’s outset. Its practical effect may prove nil. Short of signing a mass suicide pact, the Democrats were always destined to pass a bill. Will the one to come be substantially better than the one that would have emerged if the same speech had been delivered weeks earlier? Not necessarily — and marginally at most.
In the meantime, a certain damage has been done — to Obama and to the country. The inmates took over the asylum, trivializing and poisoning the national discourse while the president bided his time. The lies that Obama called out so strongly in his speech — from “death panels” to “government takeover” — ran amok. So did all the other incendiary faux controversies, culminating with the ludicrous outcry over the prospect that the president might speak to the nation’s schoolchildren on a higher plane than, say, “The Pet Goat.”
http://www.nytimes.com/...
I've long been disabused of the notion that Frank Rich was someone stellar. As a matter of fact, I once anxiously awaited the publication of "The Greatest Story Ever Sold" After securing my library copy, I was completely disappointed; there was only one minor incident he recounted that I hadn't already read. I could have written the book, had I known secondary sources would sell. (Well that, and having a name brand.)
Can anyone doubt that we are mired in theatrics at the present time?
How can one make sense of it otherwise?
"No-drama Obama" is unfortunately in the position where he might be better off appearing on "Dancing with the Czars", than trying to be painstaking and rational.
The jerks work.Unfortunately.