by Author Name Withheld 198

Created on: February 01, 2009   Last Updated: March 02, 2009

Right now, the new era of bipartisanship in Washington is more unilateral than former President Bush's foreign policy.

The massive stimulus package passed the House with zero Republican votes. Obama, who had hoped for a widely supported bill, got stonewalled despite doing three things: (1) fashioning roughly 1/3 of the package out of tax cuts, which the GOP loves; (2) going to the House Republican caucus and asking for their input; and (3) pulling provisions from the bill that Republicans didn't like (IE, money for humans)House Republicans acknowledged all of this, thanked the president, talked trash about the Democrats and voted against the bill anyway. Obama kindly offered the republicans an olive branch and extended them a place at the table of ideas, but the republicans chose to break the constructive branch into a billion little pieces.

The flagrant obstructionism of the republican leadership is breathtaking, considering for the past eight years they have been all but reticent and voiced absolutely no objections to the reckless spending on the Iraq war and pork (IE, bridge to nowhere). In fact, Bush presided over the biggest annual growth rates in discretionary spending over the last 45 years. And Bush apologists love to claim that he had no choice to expand military spending to combat terrorism at home and abroad. But the Republicans fail to recognize that he also increased both nondefense spending and mandatory programs enormously. Indeed, they looked the other way while their leader drove us to the point where we are now so long as their constituencies received earmarks.

So what does Obama do now?

Play the Populous card. Did the Barackstar somehow forget that he's the guy with his face on more merchandise than Donald Trump, and that his soaring popularity recently elevated him to the highest office in the land with a mandate for change? And that Republicans, who have very low approval ratings, got their tails handed to them in November? It would behoove President Obama to capitalize on this goodwill in the media. Much like Woodrow Wilson, another wildly popular president with immaculate oratorical skills, did with his league of nations President Obama should take to the airwaves in the internets and use that commanding yet calm and professorial style of his in explaining the significance behind this stimulus package, including all the tiresome labors he put into making it bipartisan.

Obama needs to make the Republicans appear as they are, which is a bunch of kids in high school who were abysmally underachieving social bullies with no sense of direction disrupting the classroom to attract attention. So what if it turns into a war of the words who is the public going to sympathize with, Obama or John Boehner (Especially considering the public is strongly behind massive stimulus.) Obama doesn't have to create bipartisanship by acquiescing to GOP demands. He can create bipartisanship by making these intransigent children understand the innappropriateness of their actions.

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