Defining Moment
Huffington Post
by Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect
March 21, 2010We have just witnessed what could be a turning point in the Obama presidency. In many respects we can thank Scott Brown. For it took the humiliating loss of Ted Kennedy’s senate seat, and the even deeper incipient humiliation of lost health reform, for Obama to be reborn as a fighter. It remains to be seen whether he will match the resolve that he finally summoned on health reform with comparable leadership on all of the other challenges he yet faces.
But even those of us who were lukewarm on this bill should savor the moment and honor Obama’s odyssey. His Saturday speech was simply the greatest of his presidency. It reminded us of the inspirational figure in whom so many of us invested such hopes last summer and fall. If you have been on Jupiter and somehow missed the speech, you owe it to yourself to watch it.
At long last, we saw this president leading, as only a president can. And we saw him leading as a progressive Democrat, finally admitting that no common ground with today’s Republicans is possible, narrating stories we all can recognize about the human tragedy that is our current health care system…
I can’t write the word either. It is just too offensive for we pigment challenged types to ever use in public. But, who could not be struck by the vile ‘n’ word pejorative hurled John Lewis’ direction on Sunday. This is the guy who knelt in prayer at one end of the Edmund Pettis bridge while government employees in uniforms (police) cracked his head open with billy clubs – doubtless hurling the same sort of hate filled language.
The marginal tax rate is going up 5.4% if you are making more than $500,000. It is easy to imagine that the federal government will look for ways to extend the tax increase ever downward in its own dance for survival, its curious inclination to grow itself ever-larger. Conservatives, (of a more traditional species) will have a lot to do to identify alternative sources of revenue and savings. That is their job for goodness sakes. You’d think that it is also their job to have recognized that we have been paying too much for health care, getting too little in return and that we all pay anyway for the 47 million uninsured who have the poor taste to get sick.
Interesting blurb from David Frum today – puts the radio/tv clowns in perspective:
http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo
Until the last few days, I was so afraid to get my hopes up. But then it all came together. From the outside, at least, I’d say that the two who deserve the most last-minute credit are Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. And I think it is she who prodded him into action — and, boy, when he finally did get going, he was terrific. Just what we had been hoping for.
I guess he had to learn the hard way that this Republican crowd just cannot be brought into a bipartisan process. They just can’t. They staked their claim, and I believe it’s going to backfire on them big time.