I think it’s ridiculous to argue that Obama is comparing himself to Lincoln here and his remarks about the Old School way of doing politics are a welcome reminder that American politics is not actually very much or even at all uglier now than it has been in the past. Which kinda makes it unfortunate that on his latest non-campaigning, campaign tour the President complained that:
He also, incidentally, blamed his present woes on “bad luck”. Now there’s something to this but it’s not often a good idea for a politicians to say so. It carries a pungent whiff of weakness and, worse still, self-pity.“The problem,” Obama continued, “is that we’ve got the kind of partisan brinksmanship that is willing to put party ahead of country, that is more interested in seeing their political opponents lose than seeing the country win. Nowhere was that more evident than in this recent debt ceiling debacle.”
As it happens, I think Republicans – in thrall to dogma – came close to demonstrating a total lack of fitness for office during the debt ceiling debate. But let this not obscure the fact that the President has hardly been a profile in brilliance either. It was his choice to dump his own deficit commission (of course, that’s why you have a commission in the first place) and his complaints that the opposition are just too beastly for words are not all that impressive either. (If the President does wish to talk in these terms he should make the case a little differently: the Republicans are happy to see the country lose if that’s the price of denying their opponents victory.)
But if you take the view that much of the time the American system is a zero sum game (not always, but often) then it’s perfectly sensible to believe that much of the time your opponents’ victories are bad news for the country. The Donkey and the Elephant each conflate the national interest with their own party interest even if, in recent times, the Republicans have done so more completely and with greater discipline than the Democrats.
Nevertheless, the GOP position is logical. If you believe that the country would be best served by a Republican president it makes little sense to co-operate with a Democratic incumbent in ways that may help him win a second-term. If that’s your view then, by your own logic, obstructing* the White House is the patriotic thing to do.
This, one should note, is another consequence of the Imperial Presidency and the Permanent Campaign. Those are problems of a different kind again and I don’t see any prospect that much will change on either front any time soon.
*There are times when this becomes absurd, such as the failure to fill important Federal posts. But even this has a certain crazy logic to it and, besides, is relatively risk-free for the opposition since few voters are likely to be exercised by this aspect of the system’s failure.
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