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"I Won"

By W. James Antle, III on 2.10.09 @ 10:57AM

Since "I won" is a fixture of Barack Obama's approach to bipartisanship and the powers of persuasion, since that phrase is his manifestation of a new birth of civility in our nation's capital, it seems that it also should be the solution to his problem with those nasty revisionist Republicans. Obama won and so did his party, with large majorities in both houses. He even got just enough Republican defectors in the Senate to avoid a filibuster on the legislation he says we so desperately need. So pass the damn bill already and stop pointing fingers.

Instead Obama wanted LBJ-style bipartisan supermajorities for his biggest legislative victories, without doing the LBJ-style work of actually cobbling them together. But guess what? Obama won. Most of the Republicans who would pay a political price for standing up to a Democratic president have already been voted out of office. Most of the surviving Republicans come from states and districts where Obama isn't The One, where the sound of his voice doesn't send a thrill up the leg. And guess what? These Republicans won their elections too. Did Obama decide to shelve his opposition to George W. Bush's policies after Bush won re-election? No, in part because he won election in his own right in Illinois while campaigning against those policies. Opposing them was his right.

The onus is entirely on Obama and his party. The Republicans can do little more than force him to defend the merits and contents of his stimulus package. But what did Obama expect? He won. Congratulations. Now he's got to show he can do something besides hold a rally and flap his gums.

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stysonss| 2.10.09 @ 12:03PM

fix·ture: "a familiar or invariably present element or feature in some particular setting." This would be the phrase he used once? The phrase has certainly become a fixture of right-wing blogs, but I'm not sure how something Obama uttered once is a "fixture" of his approach to anything.
He went to House and Senate Republicans meetings, invited individuals to the White House, met them socially, adjusted the bill in the House to meet their needs: how has he not been bipartisan?

W. James Antle III| 2.10.09 @ 1:20PM

The exact phrase may have only been used once or twice, but he's expressed the sentiment behind it repeatedly. The contraceptives funding he "adjusted" in the House hardly met the main Republican objections to the bill; the Senate cuts were not his doing and he is already working with the House to take them back.

I don't care if he's bipartisan or not -- just stop pretending post-partisanship when you are on the permanent campaign. His party should have the votes. Pass the damn bill or shut up.

TomS| 2.10.09 @ 2:53PM

"Now he's got to show he can do something besides hold a rally and flap his gums. "

I think that is the limit of his personal abilities.

Mary| 2.10.09 @ 6:36PM

His party should have the votes. Pass the damn bill or shut up.

Absolutely, right Mr. Antle. Their pathetic shtick is the stuff of grumbling old women.

What's crystal clear here is that Democrats never cared a whit about polls or what the Country wanted when it was -more or less- aligned behind Republican ideas and policies. They followed and pressed their ideology, however carefully they chose tested phrasing, so as to not frighten away too many.

The Republicans have nothing to fear, and a lot to gain by figuring out what they really stand for and then standing for it.

If the Country is headed for a European style government because that's what the voters want, not much can be done about that. At least, though, let us preserve the teaching of a way of thought and life that doesn't lead to or encourage pathologies.

I've been reading Paul Johnson's History of America. It's a work of love from the English RC, Oxford Historian to the American people.

Mr. Antle, per the History, the first American legal code that developed under Lord De La Ware and his successor Sir Thomas Gates was known as Dale's Code -after Gates' marshall, Thomas Dale- and what Gates himself called "Lawes Divine, Moral and Martiall."

Under these laws idleness was punished severely, I write this more as preface than point of excerpt that follows:

The colony [my addition: Jamestown, 1610] was not yet self-supporting even in food, however, and had nothing to export to England. But, the year after the code was promulgated, a settler called John Rolfe, fearing persecution for idleness began experiments with tobacco. After trying various seeds, he produced a satisfactory crop, the first sweet-tasting Virginian tobacco, and by 1616 it was already exportable. In the meantime, in 1614, he had married an Indian princess, Pocahontas, who had been in and out of the colony since its inception, when she was twelve. The marriage produced offspring and many in Virginia to this day are proud of their descent from the princess. At the time the union produced a precarious peace with the local tribes.

I don't want Republicans to chase a philosophy other than what Rolfe, his ingenuity and union with Pocahontas represents. I don't want to trade the ignorance and intransigence of our own fundamentalists -not that Rolfe was a fundamentalist- for the debasing ethos that results in citizens who want the government to just mail them the check directly.

Reading this 17th Century history of America prompted me to muse about the possibility of this current history being preparatory for man leaving this planet and planting roots on another.

It may take a couple of centuries, but I think that one of the staples of the history of the migration of a civilized people is the need to flee an oppressive or ill and dying culture.

The pilgrimage to another planet might have a religious component, but by then the religious component will have changed to include similarly disposed agnostics like the Alien in Deuteronomy. And this pilgrimage will lead to another, and another until the consummation of the age.

Cheers, and thanks for the foot soldiering by pen.

ConservativeWanderer| 2.10.09 @ 7:08PM

Ya know, if this bill is so gosh-darned wonderful, and will guarantee two chickens in every pot, sunshine and rainbows every day, ant-free picnics, trouble-free computers and cars, and universal utopia, why are the Dems so desperate for GOP votes?

You'd think that if this bill was so magnificent and those who voted for it were going to be hailed as the Saviors Of The Nation, the Democrats would be doing everything they can to pass it without giving any of the credit to the Republican Party.

The fact that they're not rushing to take all the credit for themselves indicates that they know that this bill won't make things better, and may make things worse... thus the desperate desire for GOP votes--for political cover!

Ran| 2.10.09 @ 8:25PM

"I won." That statement was, you understand, simple candor and honesty.

"Mission accomplished." Well,that was hubris.

ConservativeWanderer| 2.10.09 @ 8:31PM

Ran, what you fail to realize, in your Obama worship and BDS, is that just about every Republican in Congress can also say "I won." (Except, of course, for those that were appointed).

As for Mission Accomplished, that was specific to the ship... and she had accomplished her mission... that's why she was headed home.