Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies and the healthcare industry. I never thought I’d say this, but he needs to be more like George W. Bush. Bush was all about, “You’re with us or against us.”
Obama’s more like, “You’re either with us, or you obviously need to see another picture of this adorable puppy!”
Bush had horrible ideas, like torture and deregulation and preemptive war and tax cuts for the rich, but he pushed them through, in their full measure, never mind Congress or the Constitution or the Geneva Convention or the Magna Carta or the Code of Hammurabi.
The point is, he didn’t care if it made him unpopular with every human on the planet not named Cletus or Fred Barnes. Which it did.
And we need to marry the good ideas Obama really believes in with that Bush attitude and Bush certitude. I’d love for Obama to come out one day and say, “Jesus told me to fix healthcare.” Or, “History will decide whether stopping the polar ice caps from melting and drowning us all was a good thing.”