Give ‘Em Hell, Barry!

[babylonsister]

http://www.nationalmemo.com/give-em-hell-barry/


Give ‘Em Hell, Barry!
May 28th, 2012 12:11 am E. J. Dionne


WASHINGTON — Progressives have yearned for President Obama to follow Harry Truman’s strategy from the 1948 campaign by giving his Republican opponents hell. Now that Obama is doing just that, his critics say he’s not looking presidential.

As a longtime advocate of the Truman approach (and a fan of Give ‘Em Hell Harry and his way of doing politics), I think Obama is doing the right thing. Critics of the battling style miss what Obama needs to get done in this campaign and also ignore the extent to which so many of his foes refuse to treat him in a presidential way. Far better for him to be a fully engaged fighter with passion for what he’s saying than a distant, regal figure pretending that the other side is playing by a dainty set of rules.

snip//

To the extent that Romney can be tied to an unpopular Republican House and an obstructionist minority in the Senate, their unpopularity will rub off on him. But unlike Dewey, Romney has largely endorsed his congressional colleagues’ agenda. Obama’s task is to argue that whatever moderate sounds Romney made during his career in Massachusetts politics, these are irrelevant to how he would govern with the GOP likely to be in the congressional saddle. Obama wants to paint Romney as someone who would be a pawn of a runaway right-wing Congress, thus challenging both Romney’s strength of conviction and his ideology. As Truman did with Dewey, Obama wants to offer Romney the unpalatable choice of offending his party or offending swing voters.

There is also an advantage in Obama directly taking on Romney’s background in private equity at Bain Capital. By raising these questions himself, Obama signaled that he would not let criticisms from such Democrats as Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker force him to back down from a challenge he knows he needs to lodge against Romney’s claims as a “job creator.” By the end of last week, Booker had eased off while the Bain issue was still alive, to the point that even Rush Limbaugh was forced to acknowledge that private equity was about profit-making, not job creation.

snip//

Like Truman — and, for that matter, like Bush — Obama confronts a sharply divided country, the need to rally his own supporters, and the imperative of persuading undecided voters that electing his opponent would be a dangerous risk. What Truman taught is that Americans would rather see a president with the strength to fight than a politician with such sensitive sensibilities that he leaves all the tough stuff to others.

[Scuba]

1. If his critics don't like it, then I'll have another helping, please.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

2. Its not like his "critics"

who are complaining incessantly about President Obama being "un presidential" by being more aggressive towards the GOP sure as hell didn't support him much and/or attack the GOP for being hyper partisan extremists when President Obama was trying to be more conciliatory towards the GOP when he was first inaugurated. Nobody hit the fainting couch when President Bush was running for re-election in 2004 and helped unleash the SBVT attacks against Kerry.

[bvar22]

3. On of my favorite Democrats.

Harry knew how to keep his Party in line and true to Democratic Party Values.

[font size=3]
"I've seen it happen time after time. [font size=4]When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the Fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat.[/font][font size=3] If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign."
---President Harry Truman

[/font][/font]



And there was THIS beauty from 1937:

[font size=3]
“ A billionaire, in our estimation is much greater in these days in the eyes of the people than the public servant who works for public interest. It makes no difference if the billionaire rode to wealth on the sweat of little children and the blood of underpaid labor. No one ever considered Carnegie libraries steeped in the blood of Homestead steelworkers, but they are. We do not remember that the Rockefeller Foundation is founded on the dead miners of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company and a dozen other similar performances. We worship Mammon; and until we go back to ancient fundamentals and return to the Giver of the Tables of Law and His teachings, these conditions are going to remain with us.

[font size=4]It is a pity that Wall Street, with it’s ability to control all the wealth of the nation and to hire the best law brains in the country, has not produced some statesmen, some men who could see the dangers of bigness and of the concentration of the control of wealth[font size=3]. Instead of working to meet the situation, they are still employing the best law brains to serve greed and self interest. People can only stand so much and one of these days there will be a settlement……”."[/font]--- Harry Truman
---Senator Harry Truman, 1937

[font size=4]Leadership! "The Buck Stops HERE!" NO Excuses![/font]



[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

[SunSeeker]

4. Great quotes. Thanks. nt

[Flying Squirrel]

5. Remember `flip flop Olympics` on the official WH website?

Now THAT was unpresidential. Made me physically sick to my stomach. Didn`t hear a peep from Repugs about it going too far on an official WH website. It was disgraceful and I would have felt the same way if it had been a Democrat in office.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. People aren't used to Democrats who fight back...

We became a party of softies in the 70s and 80s - at least at the presidential level. Anyone remember Michael Dukakis blowing a 20-point lead on Bush because he wouldn't fight back? Yeah. We became the party of too nice and too nice doesn't win you squat in presidential politics.

It doesn't mean you play dirty, but it does mean you don't let them set the narrative. Fuck being nice. Nice is for losers.

[Happydayz]

7. +1

I completely agree, we have became the party of softies and playing too nice. I think there is a strategy behind Obama's playing nice as he did in his first term though. I think the gloves will come off if he gets a 2nd term and he will use the bully pulpit to push his agenda through. To be honest he has gotten a lot accomplished in his first term. But overall, I do feel that other dems have become softies. Kerry and Gore, come to mind.