Thursday, January 28, 2010

Plouffe Goes Plop

If last night’s speech was to be the beginning of the winning strategy that would accompany the return of Barack Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe into the inner circle of advisors, that beginning fizzled before it started.

How in the world can the President possibly deliver on everything that he proposed last night? Perhaps he could start by focusing on the single outcome that I think we all want: Getting the economy back on track first.

Yesterday, that’s what he said he would do. But that only happened because his super-majority was blown to bits with the election of Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, as well as the mounting threat of further casualties feared by Obama in the November mid-term Congressional contests – that’s why Plouffe is back.

Soon, it will be a return to the same old Washington power game. In his speech, Mr. Obama addressed his Democrats, “We still have the largest majority in decades, and people expect us to solve problems, not run to the hills.” To Republicans, he said, “The responsibility is now yours as well.”

Democrats aren’t running for the hills; they are eyeing November and running for re-election already. Republicans always had the responsibility, but Obama, Reid and Pelosi have been hitting them over the head with the sledge of a super-majority.

Obama’s habit of thinking and speaking of himself in the third person as a Washington outsider is not a good sign. He has been in office a year now, sitting in the seat of the highest position in the land. He is Washington.

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