Obama's Choice: FDR's First 100 Days or Lincoln's Team of Rivals

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Analyzing politics, particularly at the White House level, is like trying to look at the strategy of a sea battle without being able to know what the submarines are up to; which is to say, what is said is often part of a larger game plan that represents goals that are not being publicly disclosed.

Let's take for example the initial President Obama efforts at "bipartisanship" (a self-contradictory term when you have a GOP so united in its effort to vote solely based on self-serving political gain -- and not the best interests of the country -- in mind.) Was Obama sincerely -- and naively -- thinking that he could be bipartisan by incorporating "poison pill" GOP ideas into the "Main Street Job Creation Act"?  Was he being naive in letting three Northeastern senate Republicans hold the bill hostage until their demands were met, when it would have been much easier to make impotent a shrinking minority of Republicans by eliminating the filibuster in the Senate?

Or was the Obama Administration being presciently responsive to the polling that shows Americans want an end to "partisanship," whatever that means (after all our democracy is built upon voting for parties based on their different agendas)?  And in going out of his way to extend an olive branch, good fellowship, tax cuts in the "Main Street Job Creation Act," and even personally serving key GOP leaders oatmeal cookies at a "bipartisan" Super Bowl Party, was Obama putting the Republicans in the corner of either accepting the outreached hand of cooperation or spurning the notion of bipartisanship, thus giving Obama the running room to say "I tried, but they blew me off, so now we are going to do what is best for the country without looking back."

BuzzFlash can't say if this was the Obama plan, and if it was it will only work if a hobbled "Main Street Job Creation Act" can get the economy moving enough by 2010 so that the Newt Gingrich plan (and he is the one primarily behind this) to dilute the impact of Obama's efforts enough by making them ineffective in the short term, resulting in giving the GOP a rallying cry of "Obama's New Deal and Big Government" have failed in the mid-term elections.

Because if anything is proof of the still-partisan goals of the GOP it is the complete failure of even one member of the Republican caucus to vote for the "Main Street Job Creation Act."  And the three "moderate" GOP senators who voted for it may have done Gingrich's strategy a favor by making the bill less effective and, therefore, possibly more prone to Republican criticism in the 2010 elections.

This brings me and BuzzFlash back to Obama's high profile touting of books on the first 100 days of the FDR launch of the New Deal by steamrolling the Republicans and Lincoln's "Team of Rivals."

Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod have now said that the emphasis on "bipartisanship" ended up with the message of more jobs for Americans getting lost and the GOP controlling the frame of the debate over the bill (with the help of the corporate mainstream media). 

Because when you want to accomplish dramatic changes in America, you need to know what Solomon knew; you can't split the baby down the middle with a party whose interests are inflexibly selfish.

It is not lost on BuzzFlash that FDR knew that you had to put on your boxing gloves to achieve effective change in order to retrieve the nation from failed policies.  In a 1936 campaign speech FDR had these "timely" words to say:

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.

Obama faces the same unyielding minority opposition. He can't wish it away.

In fact, as great a President as Lincoln was (and our patron hero here in Illinois -- home of BuzzFlash), his "Team of Rivals" was formed to save the Union from the seccession of the obstructionist South, who wanted to form a new nation based on limited federal government, slavery, and fundamentalist Christianity. The "Team or Rivals" subdued the Confederate states in a bloody war; the ideological gap was so wide that no "Team of Rivals" could have prevented the war from occurrinng.

That is not unlike the political foe that the Obama White House faces in Congress today, basically a Neo-Confederate rebel party whose ranks are thinning with each election and who are in demographic decline but who still thrive on the fumes of delusion and obstructionism.

Ultimately -- as Obama's fumbled attempts at the conundrum of "bipartisanship" indicate -- he should go with the strategy of FDR's first 100 days.  (Frank Rich notes in his February 15th NYT column: "In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House.")

Otherwise, his "Team of Rivals" should be formed for the sole purpose of effecting positive change for the Union and bringing the last vestige of rebels represented by the GOP to their knees.

That's Obama's choice.  The GOP is out to beat him to a pulp through diluting his agenda to the point that it will fail -- and then we will be back to another round of tax cuts for the wealthy as America falls further into an economic sink hole.

Choose wisely President Obama.  Being liked by Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and Graham won't save the nation, but having the courage to make them irrelevant by rolling right over them will.

Otherwise you and the nation will not succeed.

THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG