sometimes life ain't fair

I like this post by Ezra Klein on the end of Year 1 of Obama’s presidency. He points out the rather obvious fact that Candidate Obama promised a lot that President Obama can’t live up to given the restraints of America’s political system. A President can say I want to establish program X, Y and Z but the nature of Congress means that a disgruntled Senator (from Connecticut say…) can take a pound of flesh and say he’ll only vote for the overall package if program Z is cut. When the opposition is doing all it can to sink your agenda and you need every vote you have to do what you want to do, things get (and have been) really ugly.

I also like his point that Candidate Obama’s main appeal was his communicative style and his ability to explain clearly and eloquently what he wanted to do, why he wanted to do it and that it was morally imperative to do so. Whereas President Obama has spoken rarely and usually only when his agenda was severely threatened. Instead of selling Americans on what he wants to do he’s been lecturing Congress when they get too close to mucking things up for him.

So while Obama’s first year has actually been rather productive… No one knows that, which is going to be a problem – especially if Congress can’t pull its act together and pass health care reform. Cause come November no one’s gonna care about the stimulus or Matthew Shepard or the repeal of the HIV travel ban or how much better the United State’s image is, if health care reform flops Democrats will have proven that they’re incapable of passing the single most important item of their agenda and -that- will not be pretty.