On Knowing When To Be An Asshole And Other Links

By Edward Harrison On Nov 18, 2010

I caught this post by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post, "The Plum Line – Obama: GOP successfully outplayed us on health reform", which shows Obama realizing he screwed up last year by bending over backwards during the healthcare debate to get Republicans like Olympia Snowe on side. Sargent quotes from Richard Wolfe’s book on page 75:

"You have to give the Republicans credit, just from a pure political perspective, that they used every instrument available to them in the Senate to prolong the process in such a way that helped drive down support nationally, that gave everybody a sense that somehow Washington was broken," he told me. "At a time when everybody was worrying about jobs, for us to have to spend six to nine months on this piece of legislation obviously was not helpful."

Here’s my take: You have to know when to be an asshole. Forget about Democrats and Republicans. Obama just doesn’t have the right temperament for a crisis this severe. Leaving aside whether he should have been prioritising healthcare at all, playing nice doesn’t get it done. You have to know when to take a principled stand – even if you think you’re going to lose. That’s what gets people behind you, by the way.

Anyway that’s exactly what I wrote in July 2009. You can read the full post here: Obama: knowing when to be an asshole. From the way Obama has turned pro-business (as I predicted he would) and is bending over backwards to appease the bank lobby, you can see nothing has changed. Personally, I think he’s a one and done kind of President. But that’s just me. Here are today’s links.