On a frigid January evening in 2009, a week before his Inauguration, Barack Obama had dinner at the home of George Will, the Washington Post columnist, who had assembled a number of right-leaning journalists to meet the President-elect. Accepting such an invitation was a gesture on Obama’s part that signalled his desire to project an image of himself as a post-ideological politician, a Chicago Democrat eager to forge alliances with conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill. That week, Obama was still working on an Inaugural Address that would call for “an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

Obama sprang coatless from his limousine and headed up the steps of Will’s yellow clapboard house. He was greeted by Will, Michael Barone, David Brooks, Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Lawrence Kudlow, Rich Lowry, and Peggy Noonan. They were Reaganites all, yet some had paid tribute to Obama during the campaign. Lowry, who is the editor of the National Review, called Obama “the only presidential candidate from either party about whom there is a palpable excitement.” Krauthammer, an intellectual and ornery voice on Fox News and in the pages of the Washington Post, had written that Obama would be “a president with the political intelligence of a Bill Clinton harnessed to the steely self-discipline of a Vladimir Putin,” who would “bestride the political stage as largely as did Reagan.” And Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard and a former aide to Dan Quayle, wrote, “I look forward to Obama’s inauguration with a surprising degree of hope and good cheer.”

Over dinner, Obama searched for points of common ground. He noted that he and Kudlow agreed on a business-investment tax cut. “He loves to deal with both sides of the issue,” Kudlow later wrote. “He revels in the back and forth. And he wants to keep the dialogue going with conservatives.” Obama’s view, shared with many people at the time, was that professional pundits were wrong about American politics. It was a myth, he said, that the two political parties were impossibly divided on the big issues confronting America. The gap was surmountable. Compared with some other Western countries, where Communists and far-right parties sit in the same parliament, the gulf between Democrats and Republicans was narrow.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012 ... z1l6uuAKCl

quixotecoyote wrote:i'm four pages in. When does it start to be scathing?

Grace wrote:willhud9, I need your sources and facts to back up that statement.

willhud9 wrote:

Grace wrote:willhud9, I need your sources and facts to back up that statement.

It's common sense from what I know about most progressive policies.

In order to enact many of the policies it would cost a ton of money, money the US does not have. So the only way to pay for the policies is with IOU funds and loans from foreign nations. That does nothing of getting our country out of debt.

Now, unless you know progressive policies that wouldn't cost the government a dime to enact, the solution at the moment is to focus on recovering our broken economy. If the government keeps favouring big business and multi-billion dollar bailouts to the auto industry than our economy is going to remain broken.

Name one progressive policy Obama wants enacted that I'd support and I'll be surprised.

willhud9 wrote:

Grace wrote:willhud9, I need your sources and facts to back up that statement.

It's common sense from what I know about most progressive policies.

In order to enact many of the policies it would cost a ton of money, money the US does not have. So the only way to pay for the policies is with IOU funds and loans from foreign nations. That does nothing of getting our country out of debt.

Now, unless you know progressive policies that wouldn't cost the government a dime to enact, the solution at the moment is to focus on recovering our broken economy. If the government keeps favouring big business and multi-billion dollar bailouts to the auto industry than our economy is going to remain broken.

Sovereign wrote:

quixotecoyote wrote:i'm four pages in. When does it start to be scathing?

I stated scathing because it paints Obama as not being the progressive he said he was going to be but rather he went in from the get go with a compromising attitude. I admit that scathing is an opinion by me as I'm more a progressive and I voted for Obama hoping he would enact progressive ideals but he really wasn't going to push hard for progressive ideals from the get go.

willhud9 wrote:Fucking glad he's not as progressive as I thought he'd be. Our country would be dead economically if so.

Warren Dew wrote:

willhud9 wrote:Fucking glad he's not as progressive as I thought he'd be. Our country would be dead economically if so.

Instead, we're only almost dead?

GT2211 wrote:...How is that deficit reduction working out for the UK economy?..

mrjonno wrote:...The only thing that is dead is unregulated, unrestricted capitalism which is not only dead by buried

willhud9 wrote:

Grace wrote:willhud9, I need your sources and facts to back up that statement.

It's common sense from what I know about most progressive policies.

In order to enact many of the policies it would cost a ton of money, money the US does not have. So the only way to pay for the policies is with IOU funds and loans from foreign nations. That does nothing of getting our country out of debt.

Now, unless you know progressive policies that wouldn't cost the government a dime to enact, the solution at the moment is to focus on recovering our broken economy. If the government keeps favouring big business and multi-billion dollar bailouts to the auto industry than our economy is going to remain broken.

Name one progressive policy Obama wants enacted that I'd support and I'll be surprised.

FreshwaterSeaCowHero wrote:OP, It kinda seems that you are trying to make this sound like a scandal or something.

trubble76 wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

Grace wrote:willhud9, I need your sources and facts to back up that statement.

It's common sense from what I know about most progressive policies.

In order to enact many of the policies it would cost a ton of money, money the US does not have. So the only way to pay for the policies is with IOU funds and loans from foreign nations. That does nothing of getting our country out of debt.

Now, unless you know progressive policies that wouldn't cost the government a dime to enact, the solution at the moment is to focus on recovering our broken economy. If the government keeps favouring big business and multi-billion dollar bailouts to the auto industry than our economy is going to remain broken.

Name one progressive policy Obama wants enacted that I'd support and I'll be surprised.

The richest country in the world can't afford progressive policies, but less wealthy countries can?
How do you work that one out?