Gun Control Fight Finally Lays to Rest the Obama-as-Timid Meme

[DonViejo]

by Peter Beinart Apr 20, 2013 4:45 AM EDT

What Obama did in the four months between Newtown and Wednesday’s Senate defeat showed some of the greatest presidential guts in U.S. history, says Peter Beinart.

The rap against Barack Obama, at least on the left, has long been that he’s too cautious, too calculating, too conciliatory. Not a guy willing to take risks.

We can apologize now.

What Obama did in the four months between December’s Newtown shooting and this Wednesday’s Senate capitulation was one of the great displays of presidential guts in American history. On gun control, the Democratic Party had been in the fetal position for years. By 2008, the party whose 1972 platform had proposed banning handguns was reduced to declaring: “We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.” In 2009, when Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley tried to revive gun control legislation, House Democratic leaders refused even to hold a hearing. In 2010, Obama signed legislation lifting restrictions on carrying guns in federal parks. Last July, after a gunman killed 12 and injured 58 at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told the press: “There are things that we can do, short of legislation and short of gun laws, as the president said, that can reduce violence in our society. We do need to take a broader look at what we can do to reduce violence in America. And that’s not just legislative, and it’s not just about gun laws.”

Even after Newtown, swarms of commentators warned that Obama would be a fool to take on such a quixotic cause. “There is absolutely no chance whatsoever of bipartisan gun control legislation,” University of Texas law professor Sandy Levinson told Bloomberg News the day after the massacre. “In the short term, we won’t see any new gun-control legislation,” added gun control expert Robert Spitzer. “Any hope that he [Obama] will lead an effort to enact substantive gun control is pure fantasy,” added an article in The Atlantic a few days later.

full article:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/20/gun-control-fight-finally-lays-to-rest-the-obama-as-timid-meme.html

[on point]

1. 2 diff dimensions. On social ok to good. On Econ bad to terrible

Not being timid means leading the fight, not like his evolution on gay rights where he jumped on the band wagon late

Certainly not like his weak leadership on taxing the wealthy

No not laid to rest. Supporting something 90% of the country wants is not a show of leadership. Fighting the entrenched powers would be. Still waiting on that one

[byeya]

2. And something positive on dealing with climate change