President Obama Walks Loudly and Carries a Little Stick!

Now that the vacation is over, and Congress has been skewered at town hall meetings, the President will address the malcontents at a joint session of Congress. Hands off didn’t work. So now he’ll be more “forceful”, prescriptive, and close the deal. He talks a good talk- possibly the best ever- but that’s not enough this time. It’s still a long putt to the cup.

It will take more than talk to prod Congress along. He needs a big stick, and he doesn’t have a big stick, or any stick for that matter. He’s politically impotent. He lacks the clout a president like Lyndon Johnson cultivated over many years of wheeling and dealing. Lyndon was able to do what John Kennedy, another freshman Senator turned President, couldn’t do- bend the Senators to his will- even the ones who hated him. It was his clout, not his rhetoric that gave us Civil Rights and Medicare to name a few biggies.

President Obama isn’t about to bully the blue dogs, or any tenured Senator only by embarrassing them with rhetoric in public. They’ll only go along if there’s quid pro quo (aka pork), and lots of it! How much pork will it take to bend the will of the blue dogs? When it’s over, if we see bridges to nowhere, airports on remote islands, strip mining on national lands, new federal buildings in every Podunk town, submarines the Navy doesn’t want, etc, etc, all in the opponents states…then we’ll have an idea. I hope America can accept the collateral damage that comes with making the sausage… uh- I mean health care reform.