by Jules Witcover

For all of Barack Obama's acknowledged erudition and brilliance, he apparently is a very slow learner in one respect. He doesn't seem to grasp that the Republicans with whom he strives to work are not his friends, and in fact seek him ill.

It's a fact that has not gotten through to him for nearly two years in the White House. And it is one that he appears ready to brush aside in the two years ahead, signaling he will keep on trying for the bipartisanship has been an abysmal failure so far.

His rationale now seems to be that the Republican takeover of the House and increased strength in the Senate leaves him little choice but to play nice with the others. That reading, at least, was what chagrined Democratic liberals took from White House political adviser David Axelrod's comment in The Huffington Post that "we have to deal with the world as we find it."

During the late lamented midterm congressional campaign, the veil seemed temporarily to be lifted from Obama's his eyes as he lashed out in, for him, harsh terms about the opposition party that had stonewalled him since his inauguration.

With a kind of incredulity, he hammered at the reality that much of the economic mess on his plate had been left there by his Republican predecessor. But the "blame Bush" argument got him nowhere with the voters, as justifiable as it was. Harry Truman's "the buck stops here" easily trumped it.

Neither did his repeated analogy of a car driven into a ditch by the Republicans who then just stood by and refused to help push it out. Still, in one of the ugliest campaigns ever, Obama himself never really got down and dirty.

The Republican leaders for their part didn't bother to hide their objective of obstructionism leading toward political annihilation. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said it all when he proclaimed that his prime objective was to see to it that Obama became "a one-term president."

McConnell's only concession on the day after the election was to say the Republicans were now ready to do business with him if "the president comes in our direction." The first test will be in the lame-duck congressional session, and there are signs already that Obama may cave on his campaign position that the Bush tax cuts be extended only to middle-class Americans.

If he wants to go to the mat with the opposition, he has no better case on which to do so than to fight against extension to the richest Americans, which would add an estimated $700 billion to federal deficit that the Grand Old Party says it is so eager to reduce.

Liberal Democrats in and out of Congress are increasingly expressing impatience with Obama about his figurative turning of the other cheek. They argue that the split responsibility of a divided government should elevate the fight on principles, not reduce it to toothless capitulation.

Those Democrats who were quick to deplore the decision of Speaker Nancy Pelosi to seek the role of House minority leader on grounds she would be an excessively disruptive force in a new era of congressional comity have had it all wrong. Her presence should remind Obama that he still has clout, and allies with which to assert it, along with his veto power.

Another Harry Truman lesson that would stand Obama in good stead is that this country loves a fighter. It's fine to face the reality of diminished congressional support, but if a president comes to be seen as weak, as may be beginning to take hold now in dealing with the Republicans, he soon finds himself on a slippery slope.

Bill Clinton found himself in a similar position after heavy House losses at his first midterm, leading him among other things to argue lamely that he was still "relevant." He accommodated himself by moving more to the center, and Obama for all his talk of change may be obliged to do the same. But before then, he would be well served to show a little more willingness to slug it out with his contemptuous foes.

 

Available at Amazon.com:

The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama

The Feminine Mystique

The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy

The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics

Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks

The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House

Winner-Take-All Politics, How Washington Made the Rich Richer -- And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class

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Obama's Blind Side | Politics

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