Why Obama Needs to Change to Win

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http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-obama-needs-to-change-to-win-20120222

Last week I wrote about four major magazine articles evaluating Barack Obama's success and future prospects as president. "How He Fumbled, Why He's Recovering," we called it, and the stories all narrated Obama's typically serpentine ideological course: First he strikes positions designed to be conciliatory toward Republicans, then finds them utterly uninterested in conciliation – at which point, as Andrew Sullivan puts it, he swings to a "position of moderate liberalism and fights for it." The four pieces divided mainly in how they assessed Obama’s strategic acumen. Sullivan thinks the president has charted a deliberate course that's achieved staggering change. James Fallows, Noam Scheiber, and Ryan Lizza explain Obama’s achievements as the accidental product of executive inexperience – with Scheiber describing the president's approach as fraught with danger: "Sooner or later," he writes, "Obama may encounter a crisis that can't be reversed at the eleventh hour."

Jim Fallows calls this debate over whether Obama is a chess master or a chess pawn the "central mystery of his performance as a candidate and a president." Let's say today, for the sake of this argument, that Obama has been a master; let's grant, per Andrew Sullivan, that the president has played his opponents for fools, over and over again, and in so doing has bent the world to his will as much as any president can.

Let's also allow, with Sullivan, that the Republican Party has gone 'round the bend with extremism, that their turn in power during the first years of the milennium harmed our nation grievously, and that their vision for the country must be opposed and rejected if America is to get back on course.

Here's the problem: Even if Obamaism works on its own terms – that is, if Sullivan is right that Obama’s presidency is precisely on course – it can't stop Republicans from wrecking the country. Instead, it may end up abetting them.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-obama-needs-to-change-to-win-20120222#ixzz1nDb4qI49

[CAPHAVOC]

1. He fumbled on health care for two years.

[Doctor_J]

2. He's adopted Repuke positions on many issues, then had to

take the blame for them when they failed. As for Sully, I know he's a big fan, but as for "playing his opponents for fools", this is a ridiculous assertion given the 2010 election. And when the Repukes finally succeed in wrecking the country, it will have been on Obama's watch while he kept trying to make nice with them.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

3. He's going to be re-elected. It's a sure thing. That's why he doesn't have to really change.

But if his campaign handlers want to give us the impression that he is willing to abandon the Republicans to make us feel good for a while, that's OK too. That may be the best that we can get.