Presidential Atrophy

Rachel Maddow today brought up a kernal of wisdom from Mahatma Ghandi of the four steps of a struggle: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". She used these four steps in reverse to make a rather succinct observation on the Presidency of Barack Obama: "First you win, then they fight you, then they laugh at you, then they ignore you". A cautionary prediction, certainly, but one which is quite sadly possible when our presumed strong "change you can believe in" President capitulates to a Republican minority during the current lame duck congressional session and gives away the store, caving into the Republican demands to add $900 billion dollars to the national deficit by extending all of the Bush tax cuts for an additional 2 years. And who really believes that a Republican-controlled House will let a bill pass in 2011 that eliminates this gift to the super wealthy?

And why? The assumption here is that this concession was politically required in order to get a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits during the greatest economic downturn in our history since the Great Depression.

Some of the wiser economists have pointed out that the President has bargained away $900 billion (for a paltry $40 billion--which is approximately what the unemployment extensions will cost--at a time when many Republicans are terrified about voting now against unemployment benefits and would eventually let that measure  pass by itself, not linked to any other proposals. In other words, to get "a deal" the President has "punted on third down" (forgive the sports metaphor repeated by Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown on Maddow's 12/7 program). Who knows whether it was 3rd down and 1 yard or 3rd down and 20 yards, but "the team" went for the punt prematurely and yielded the playing field.

This is not the "change we can believe in" that progressive, independent and Democratic voters campaigned for in the fall of 2008. This is not the strength that we assumed a congressional majority could deliver. This is more than disappointing, it's almost criminal.