Obama’s 2012 problem

If Obama hasn’t bought himself a primary fight next year, it’ll only be because the Democrats as a party and an institution are too fucking feckless to dare to give it a go.

I don’t think Obama’s in trouble because of taxing, or spending issues; not because I hate the weak, watered-down version of health care reform that finally squeaked through; not for failing to get us out of Afghanistan, even though our mission there ended long ago; not for any of the thousands of capitulations he’s made to the other side because, like Lincoln, Obama understands that successful politics necessarily demands compromise.

No, I’m going candidate-shopping because of the out-to-lunch way this President has continued to try to reach comity with an opposition that has sworn they are not about to compromise, and have followed through on that oath on every occasion.

It’s easy enough to say the Tea Partiers, by and large, are no fucking rocket scientists. The fact that they want—to paraphrase a well-known Vietnam-era quote—to destroy the country in order to save it proves that.

When they were elected, I had very little doubt they’d follow through on their campaign pledges and go to Washington and deliberately fuck everything up. They had nothing to lose; a couple months before they were homemakers and dentists and gas station attendants. Their worst-case scenario is they get two years of living in Washington DC being feted by their admirers, lose the next election and go home with U.S. Congressperson on their resumé.

However, when your only purpose in becoming an elected representative is to destroy the institution to which you’ve just been elected, you are not being helpful. Bless their hearts, though, most of the freshman Tea Party class are not thoughtful enough to understand that. All they know is that they’re winning and it feels good.

Their entire platform boils down to decrying government hand-outs, despite the fact that the clutching hands are frequently theirs—or their constituents’—and the hand-out is their monthly Social Security check or Medicaid subsidy. If a person doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to put those two facts together and see that ending one would necessarily end the other, I cannot in good conscience hold them to a normal standard of accounting. The “special” kids always get a pass.

But Obama? He’s a smart feller. He’s traveled the world, taught at Harvard and won a Presidential election—which would not be that impressive an accomplishment considering the other option at the time, but I give him major points for besting Hillary in the primaries. That shit was intense.

So no, Barack Obama doesn’t get a pass.

And for the life of me, I don’t see a grand master scheme behind him slashing entitlements to the bone to reach a compromise with an opposition that has promised not to compromise, has never compromised and is ready to go back to selling used cars in Paducah before they compromise.

If only politics wasn’t known as “the art of compromise.”

On paper, the Tea Party’s unified, unwavering adherence to their common goal—after winning election—is admittedly admirable. Practically unheard-of!

Unfortunately, in practice, it’s making us the laughing stock of the world, is close to bankrupting us and according to every pundit I’ve heard—even on Fox—has already guaranteed a downgrade in the country’s credit rating, whether or not Congress pulls some kind of hellish, diseased rabbit out of its hat at the last minute.

Obama should have quit throwing everything the Left holds dear under the bus a long time ago and gotten serious. The Tea Party is holding the country hostage, and he’s dithering over what kind of get-away car to provide for them.

He’s climbed onto the bully pulpit numerous times during this process, comandeering prime-time TV airtime, and was so modulated, sensible and restrained that nobody even noticed. He’s exercising emotional restraint at a time that desperately calls for passion, it’s what is propelling his political opponents.

Instead, he’s bringing a slingshot to a showdown with an intransigent, dug-in opponent armed with suitcase nukes-grade ignorance of the Process. His compromise argument—with the Tea Party crowd—has all the potency of a Hansens Kiwi Strawberry fruit drink.

It’s a major tactical fuck-up, and makes me wonder about some of his other decisions as President.

In the end, he may just be too much of a professor and not enough of a street brawler.

Or maybe he simply can’t bring himself to believe that America has come to this point, where a small but vocal minority with half-formed, ill-advised and counter-intuitive ideas are successfully steering the entire political direction of the country, and has thrown in the towel.

Either way, I am so disappointed with Obama’s unfathomable denseness in insisting to try to compromise with people who have repeatedly told him flat-out they are never going to compromise, that if a candidate comes along who matches W’s swagger with Clinton’s wonkiness and grasp of the game of politics, I will give that person a very serious look, party affiliation notwithstanding.

Well, except for a Tea Party candidate. I, myself, am not willing to destroy the country in order to save it, nor do I believe it is necessary or advisable.