Rahm: I never believed in bipartisanship

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Is the left's enduring caricature of Rahm Emanuel -- as the primary advocate for the White House's futile and self-damaging quest for bipartisanship -- all wrong?

In a new book, Rahm claims he privately argued to Obama that he shouldn't pursue bipartisan support for health reform, because it would take too much time, instead insisting that the lesson of Clinton's failure to pass reform was that it was imperative to put a premium on getting it done quickly. That cuts strongly against the image of Rahm as the chief internal advocate of the White House's strategy of deal-making and accommodation with Republicans.

Rahm makes the claim in interviews with journalist Richard Wolffe, in his new book, "Revival: The Struggle for Survival Inside the Obama White House," which was released today. From page 102:

Unlike his boss, Emanuel wasn't interested in looking reasonable with Republicans; he wanted to look victorious. He didn't care much for uniting red and blue America; he wanted blue America to beat its red rival...

Obama was prepared to sacrifice time and political capital to make his policy bipartisan and more ambitious; Emanuel believed Obama did not have that luxury. "Time is your commodity. That answers everything," Emanuel said. "But a lot of us thought we didn't have the amount of time that was being dedicated. If you abandon the bipartisan talks you get blamed. He still wanted to try to achieve it that way. But that's one of a series of things you can look back on and be a genius about.

"My job as chief of staff is to give him 180-degree advice. He hired me, as he asked, to learn from the past, or to use my knowledge from my time in Congress and in the Clinton administration. Watching '94, watching '97 when we did kids' health care, and then studying Medicare, what were the lessons? The lesson about time as a commodity is not mine, it's Lyndon Johnson's. You got X amount of time; you gotta use it."

The decision to waste time chasing bipartisan support for health reform was clearly one of the mistakes that led to health care being such a big political liability for Dems. It extended the whole mess by months and months, which gave opponents more time to demagogue the bill and scare voters and helped turn the public against the process. Rahm seems to be suggesting here that he foresaw something like this happening, and argued against the futile quest for bipartisan support, which is certainly not the view of his legacy in the White House that has endured.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/11/rahm_i_never_believed_in_bipar.html

(Note: Some interesting and contradictory comments follow the article.)

[Brother Hesekiel 2,236]

It is my strong opinion that President Obama is some kind of a Trojan horse.

When the true rulers of the World, those who control the money and the markets, realized that the American people would elect a Democrat as their next President in 2008, they figured out which candidate would be ideal to support. It had to be a candidate that had a chance to win, and there were only the Clinton woman and the young man from Chicago in the finals. They assumed correctly, which is why the Obama campaign received the largest single contribution from . . . yep. Goldman Sachs.

http://www.opensecre...8&cid=n00009638

Of course, the Obama administration got more from them: a huge amount of ex Goldman Sachs employees in the Government's key positions. Then the bailout of Wall Street happened . . . surprise! Then the bailout of the auto industry happened, which, if you think about it, is actually another bailout of the stock market. Surprise! Then the war escalates. Surprise! Then the Hollywood-style performance about the healthcare reform happened . . . with nothing to show for. Surprise! Guantanamo closed? Of course not. Surprise! Don't ask don't tell repealed? Of course not. Surprise! The list goes on.

I believe Obama is a good guy and I actually donated to his campaign. But I believe he has very little say in what happens, because the people who rule the country tell him exactly what to do. If he disobayed their demands, he would quickly end up like J.F. Kennedy. Surely, they would find a crazy guy to blame the assassination on.

And so the theatre continues, wool is spun in front of the sensation-hungry electorate who needs some distraction from Jerry Springer and American Idol, until the next round.

Edited November 17, 2010 by Just Bob

[IndigoSkies 168]

That makes sense. Obama tried too hard and too much to unite the two parties. In doing so, he allowed himself to be viewed as someone who's weak enough to not do things on his own. He always needed someone with him. In this case the Republican party. Obama didn't achieve anything substantial. Now that Republicans have taken over the House, he should do things with more assertion. He can always blame the GOP after all. He can start with by not compromising on the tax cut. He should give the GOP an ultimatium between allowing the tax-cuts to expire completely for everyone or only for the richest people who make more than $250K or whatever the limit-du-jour is. Then he should blame the GOP for everything that goes wrong. We all know he's not going to do this because he's got a election to win in two years. Perhaps we should allow people to be a president for only one term.