Needlenose

Via Greg Sargent, the New York Times today offered a look ahead at President Obama’s political preparations for the next two years:

Mr. Obama discussed the pitfalls — and opportunities — of divided government with former President Bill Clinton during a long meeting this month. . . .

Despite all his time studying the Clinton administration, Mr. Obama told his aides that he had no intention of following the precise path of Mr. Clinton, who after the Democratic midterm election defeats of 1994 ordered a clearing of the decks inside the White House, installed competing teams of advisers and employed a centrist policy of triangulation. In fact, several advisers confirmed, the word “triangulation” has been banned by Mr. Obama because he does not believe it accurately describes his approach.

This has the potential to be the most notable linguistic self-deception by a Democratic president since Clinton claimed that oral sex wasn’t really sex.  But Sargent, at least, seems willing to buy the administration’s spin:

Triangulation just isn’t Obama’s style, and his scolding of liberals seems to be rooted in genuine frustration with them for disagreeing with him about what’s politically possible, given today’s realities. To whatever degree Obama is using his disagreement with the left for positioning purposes, it’s more about temperament than ideology: His role is that of the voice of sanity trying to talk sense into uncompromising partisans on both sides. This just isn’t Clintonian triangulation in any sense.

Actually,  that “voice of sanity” posturing was what Clinton’s version of triangulation was about.  For all the symbolic hippie-punching Clinton may have done, he also stood up to the Republican attempt to shut down the government in order to force spending cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment.  In the process, Clinton defined those issues (where public opinion was solidly behind the Democratic/liberal position) as the core difference between him and the GOP, and thereby cemented his re-election in 1996.

Frankly, we would be fortunate if this was the lesson Obama learned from Clinton’s experience.  And for those interested in grasping slim reeds of hope, the NYT story does float this possibility:

Mr. Obama intends not only to extend a hand to Republicans but also to begin detaching himself more from Congress and spending more time making his case directly to the American people.

“In a world of divided government, getting things done requires a mix of compromise and confrontation,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “What are the things you can do without Congress? In some cases, that involves executive orders, but it also involves using the bully pulpit of the presidency to make a political argument about the direction of the country.”

Well, golly.  If only he’d figured that out before his party lost its clout in Congress!

In the meantime, progressives who feel like Obama has given them nothing but lumps of coal in their stockings all year are hereby informed that the administration has banned the use of that term as well.  Please use the phrase “victory nuggets” instead.  Merry Christmas!

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Gingrich has been gradually creeping out from the shadows into the limelight since his fall from grace when leading the impeachment crusade against the very popular Bill Clinton.  But the Gingrich of the 90s seems relatively tame compared to the teabaggers and birthers of today – and even compared to Gingrich 2010!

In a recent speech to the reactionary American Enterprise Institute, Gingrich seems to have planted one foot firmly amidst the teabagger camp with his calls to forbid the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which is neither a Mosque nor at Ground Zero), and the other solidly planted in the Wolfowitz/NeoConArtist era of never-ending war on Radical Islam:

“I believe [Bush] was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we’re one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 — and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it — then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it’s because we’ve stood at brink, looked over and thought, “Too big a problem.”

“If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in ‘41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won,” Gingrich said. The U.S. has to “over-match the problem,” he said, adding, “That’s what Americans are all about.”

I wonder if he got the memo that various Repug leaders were starting to bail on Shrubya’s Afghanistan Folly?  Palin/Gringrich in 2012 – the worst of 3 eras of Repug misleadership!  It would be kinda luck the Germans in WWII – invading a bunch of weak countries (Iran, N. Korea), then going crazy and attacking Russia from Palin’s house…I don’t even want to think about the hell they’d create.

Carter has built countless homes and negotiated numerous ceasefires after his Presidential term.  Clinton has negotiated the release of innocent hostages and worked to help the victims of natural disasters.

Shrubya doesn’t roll that way. Watch as Shrubya wipes his hand on Bill Clinton’s shirt after shaking the hand of a Haitian:

If there is one thing politicians should have learned from the Damnpeachment of Clinton, it’s that you’re better just admitting something and asking for forgiveness, rather than denying the obvious then continuously changing your story with ever finer parsing of words like “is.”

Nancy Pelosi, please step aside and let somebody more competent assume the Speaker of the House position – preferably somebody who wasn’t a Quisling Democrat during the reign of King George the Witless.

*Update 6/3/09* Turns out there is more to the story – maybe even some credence to Nancy’s claims that she was misled.  Turns out Dick Cheney led all these Congressional intelligence briefings, even those on torture techniques.  Forget the Truth Commission, it’s time for Congress to subpoena his ass and start grilling him…pronto!

“They’ve tried to suppress black voting, they’ve ran on the Confederate flag in Georgia and South Carolina. And from top to bottom, the Republicans supported it. So I don’t see what they’re jumping on Trent Lott about… that’s the Republican policy. How do they think they got a majority in the South anyway?”

(Full text of Clinton’s comments here)