Just a quick blog entry, since the readings I assigned to my students are rather boring (Nice Move: turn them off in the first week by assigning dry material...) and I don't wish to read them for the fifth time...
Okay, President Obama has shown his respect for the constitutional provisions that not only suggest, but demand, that Congress be the body that deliberates legislation. Now, let's see how deft he is at using his extra-constitutional power of bargaining. I get the impression that he is very good at it, despite the rather shallow analyses that pervade the airwaves (and we wonder why people like my brother, sister, and brothers-in-law are so uninformed about politics and prone to manipulation of demagogues?!).
First, I hope you saw the faces on Republicans as he spoke to them on Wednesday about health care. The vacuous ones in the popular press do not seem to connect the frustrated blurting of Rep. Wilson to the grimaces on most Republicans (or McCain's painful smile and "thumbs up" when Obama cornered him by adapting his views to McCain's), who know they are cooked. We may be seeing the end of the Republican Party as we know it (I am not willing to make such a bold assertion yet, though), and they know it. That is why they are grasping at fiction in countering the Obama plan.
This guy is good, a modernist in a postmodern political era, but one who actually appreciates the postmodern dilemma. He seems to understand that responding in-kind, the method used by Democrats in the Clinton era, is not the way to win.
I have always thought that postmodern politics would burn itself out, and I think Obama is dousing the flames in a cool, effective manner. Let's see if I am right on health care...
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