Bipartisanship, The Obama Way

By Peter Wilson

I got an email from Barack Obama today, addressed "Dear Peter," with an informal comma rather a formal colon. I guess we're on first name basis now. I was hoping for an instant that the President wanted to ask permission to quote from one of my AT articles in his next speech, but alas it was just another of those fundraising letters from the DSCC.

The letter begins predictably with an appeal to bipartisanship: "In this new Congress, it is not enough to talk about common ground. We must -- together -- seek it."

The next sentences make an abrupt about-face:

We must enact an agenda that will lift our country from this recession and confront the challenges of this new decade.

One key group of individuals will be champions of this effort: the Democrats in the Senate.

Rather than bipartisanship, "one key group...Democrats." Rather than finding "common ground," "we must enact an agenda" -- the agenda of Barack Obama.

The remainder of the letter is a series of marching orders to Republicans, demanding that they get in line behind the Democrats' partisan agenda:

The challenges we face as a people demand nothing less.

We must spur innovation and renew our nation's infrastructure... [shovel ready jobs].

We must reform our education system...[more money for teacher's unions].

We must discover and implement the solutions that will allow us to stop the warming of our planet, create green jobs, and deliver security for future generations [still the green jobs mantra?] [my italics above].

This laundry list of Obama's new "investments" -- i.e., more government boondoggles, more expansion of government, bigger deficits, etc., was rejected by the voters in November, but Obama's idea of finding common ground is to bully dissenters into seeing things his way.

This blatant self-contradiction is humorous until you realize that the guy in charge of the country is clueless about how easy it is to ridicule him. It doesn't inspire confidence.