Emily
MikeIn the wake of the Massachusetts debacle, everyone is saying that Barack Obama now has to decide whether to “go populist” or move even more to the center. As a liberal/progressive, I obviously think he should start looking out for the people rather than the corporations. If he takes that strategy, it will obviously take time for him to convince the people that he has changed. But, changing his staff is one thing that will not take much time. Getting rid of, for example, Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner will send a message that changes are coming.
But the most obvious quick change that he should make is to fire Rahm Emanuel. Obama’s reason for making Emanuel his Chief of Staff was because of Emanuel’s supposed skill at making deals with Congress. In reality, all Emanuel has done is cut deals with corporate special interests in misguided attempts to perpetuate Democrats in power, just like Republicans always do. His “tough guy” reputation has been nowhere to be seen.
The result of the Emanuel plan has been close to a total failure, For health care, for instance, maybe no one could have reached any deals with the “totally-obstructionist” Republicans, but Emanuel couldn’t even keep Democrats in line, as witnessed by the many cave-in (and possibly unconstitutional) deals he had to make to have them even vote for the completely watered-down bills that are currently before them. Keeping Emanuel will only result in more of the same and, in fact, he may even dig in deeper in a misguided attempt to keep some semblance of his reputation.
So, Mr. President, take the very easy step of firing Emanuel. It certainly will not make things any worse and it would send the message to the people that you acknowledge you have not paid enough attention to their needs and will do better.
BONUS FUN QUOTE OF THE DAY: How do you like this quote from Joe Lieberman?: “I felt from the beginning that the best way to adopt anything as major as health-care reform was to do it in a bipartisan way.” This, from the man who repeatedly changed his mind and seemed most interested in either (1) feeling important by keeping his name in the news or (2) screwing the Democrats because he somehow thought they had mistreated him.
Filed under: Politics Tagged: | Barack Obama, Joe Lieberman, Rahm Emanuel
[...] the state of things in the Congress these days. Indeed, some Democrats are already willing to sacrifice Rahm Emanuel as a scapegoat for the failures of the Obama administration. What this ignores, of course, is that the problem [...]