A thought I had this morning while driving the van to work: For everything thing people complain President Obama hasn’t done, every 2008 campaign promise unfulfilled, ask yourself: Did Obama make an attempt to do something? Did he propose an idea, and then have it introduced in some form to Congress. If Congress then fucked up the idea or didn’t pass it into law, then the blame for not getting things done should be on the portion of congress that prevented the solution from being implemented, not on the person that proposed the solution.
The GOP is trying to blame Obama for not getting things done, when it is the GOP contingent in Congress that made the decision to either vote down legislation, use procedural methods to prevent it getting passed, or force the administration to change the legislation in a way that would make it more palatable to the neo-conservative block… before it was voted down. There are numerous examples of this: budget cutting legislation that was not accepted by the Republican members of the bi-partisan supercommittee, jobs and stimulus bills that were vetoed by the house, the changes the Conservatives demanded of the Affordable Care Act that made it less effective than the President wanted (but he signed it because something was better than nothing).
The GOP should state the real reason they do not want Obama in office — and it has nothing to do with what he couldn’t get done, which they didn’t want done anyway. The voting populace should also be clear on the reason Obama had so much trouble — significant constituencies in Congress were not working for the benefit of the country, but for the benefit of their party with the specific goal of returning their party to power.
When components in Congress refuse to compromise for the benefit of the Country… when the middle ground cannot be found… when it is only one side that is willing to compromise… something is broken. Those problems are not the responsibility of the President. Rather, they are the responsibility of the Congressional leadership that promotes and encourages the partisanship, and the members of Congress that choose to place partisanship over doing good.
There. Now I’ve got this out of my head.