"The American people sent us here to rebuild the American dream, to change the way Washington does business, to make our country work for ordinary citizens again. We've made a good start by cutting the deficit, by reducing the size of the Federal Government, by reinventing much of our Government to do more with less. We have increased our investment in education and expanded trade, and our economy has created more than 5 million jobs. We've also made a serious start in the fight against the terrible plague of crime and violence in this country. I remain committed to completing the work we have done.
Still, in the course of this work, there has been too much politics-as-usual in Washington, too much partisan conflict, too little reform of Congress and the political process. And though we have made progress, not enough people have felt more prosperous and more secure or believe we were meeting their desires for fundamental change in the role of Government in their lives....
To those who believe we must keep moving forward, I want to say again, I will do everything in my power to reach out to the leaders and the Members of this new Congress. It must be possible to make it a more effective, more functioning institution. It must be possible for us to give our people a Government that is smaller, that is more effective, that reflects both our interests and our values..."
Sound familiar? It's not Obama. It's Bill Clinton after the 1994 mid-term losses suffered by the Democrats. It would have been nice to hear some of those words today, but President Obama chose to blame the defeat on the economy and on his failure to adequately stay in touch with the American public and to explain his programs.
Now, that's just not what we saw last night when the election returns rolled in. We saw a tidal wave of one resounding theme - nothing is working in Washington because the government's too big and expensive and the President has done nothing but magnify those errors.
Today, Obama was not in the frame of mind to say he'd do his best to reach out or cooperate with the GOP. He never said his programs were unpopular, choosing to defend Obamacare as being popular with most Americans. When a reporter called him on the fact that 50% of Americans oppose Obamacare and want it repealed, his answer was, "...so, 50% of Americans support it."
Mr. Obama said he accepted responsibility for the defeat, but he pushed home the idea again and again that cooperation will not be easy in the next two years and that the GOP will have to find ways to cooperate with him. He couldn't find it in his heart or mind to simply say, as Clinton did, "I will do everything in my power to reach out to the leaders and the Members of this new Congress."
Barak Obama campaigned on going to Washington to change things. He was never specific about what he'd change, so everyone naively assumed he'd change things as they would like him to. What he did was ram through immensely unpopular legislation on health care and raise the deficit by an outlandish amount by taking advantage of a Democrat-controlled Congress.
It's easy, relatively speaking, for a President to do what he wants when all the pieces of the Washington machine are on his side. Today, the change Americans were clamoring for in 2008 may finally have come to Washington, but the President doesn't seem to realize it or is too proud to acknowledge it directly, except for a joking remark about taking a beating last night.
Politics is a demanding vocation. It takes years to learn the art of spar and parry, of give and take that saves one's heartfelt ideals while continuing to have a voice that counts. That's not "politics as usual," it's simply the fact of the matter. No one expects a soldier to become a general right after basic training, and no one should expect a neophyte Democrat Senator with no real political experience or training to be a good President who is expert in the art of spar and parry and compromise needed to get things done on the national level.
Perhaps, at the end of the day, we all feel some compassion for Mr. Obama because we are the ones who put him in harm's way. He wasn't ready, but he didn't know it. We should have.
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