Lessons in Leadership: Why Obama Needs to Brush Up on His FDR - Arianna Huffington

[Mira]

Full article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/lessons-in-leadership-why_b_267710.html">right here


Watching the gun-toting, Nazi-sign-holding town hall crazies, the talk radio charlatans, and the Palin-infected politicos, my first instinct has been to rally around President Obama and defend his handling of the health care debate against this Cuckoo's Nest menagerie.
But my better instinct has prevailed over my protective instinct. It's time to take a cold, hard look at how the president's leadership -- or, more accurately, his lack of leadership -- on health care has helped create the vacuum that allowed these fringe-dwellers and their preposterous claims to dominate the debate.

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The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, the New Deal, Social Security, Medicare, the Voting Rights Act -- each of these required a bloody fight. Only after they were pushed into law, and people saw that they worked, did a consensus grow up around them.

Isaiah Berlin famously laid out two opposing styles of leadership in his essay "The Hedgehog and the Fox." The hedgehog doggedly and relentlessly pursues one big idea. The fox, on the other hand, flits and floats and tries to advance the way Obama has on health care -- by spinning, triangulating, and splitting the difference. And it's this foxy slicing and dicing of the message that the public is truly sick of, and which has created the vacuum that allowed the debate to devolve into nonsense about death panels and socialized medicine (In June, the public option was essential; in August it was "just one sliver" of reform. In September, not negotiating with PhRMA was called "a profound mistake"; in July, he agreed to do just that. Etc, etc, etc.).

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Soon after his election in 1932, FDR told a group of labor leaders who were pushing reformist legislation: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it." Contrast this with Obama, who has told his most avid supporters to settle down and avoid putting pressure on recalcitrant Democrats.

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Speaking of the entrenched interests arrayed against him, FDR said: "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred." Obama, on the other hand, welcomes these entrenched interests into the Oval Office and invites them to amputate another limb off health care reform and dump it in the garbage on the way out.

Such is the desire for real reform that even the poorly explained -- and only fitfully supported by the White House -- public option (which, it's worth noting, is already a half-a-loaf compromise from a Medicare-for-all single-payer plan) still has 77 percent support among the public.

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During the campaign, Obama frequently said that this wasn't about him, but about all of us. That's true, but we're now at a juncture where it actually is about him.

The president has the leadership skills to reclaim this debate and take it directly to the American people, sidestepping -- or running over, if need be -- those who have decided to stand in the way of real change.

[Cant trust em]

1. Has Arianna ever been a political leader?

I find it somewhat ironic how authors and commentators are going to give the President of the United States "leadership" advice.

[Skittles]

12. you don't have to be a leader to know good leadership

or severe lack of good leadership

[bvar22]

2. K&R .... up to +4.

I would LOVE to have seen Harry Reid backtalk LBJ or FDR.

[lapfog_1]

3. Had the moneyed conspirators found a more receptive ear

FDR might well have been the last elected President.

And they have learned from their previous clumsy attempts to overthrow. The CIA is their wholly owned subsidiary inside the government, and it's quite likely that JFK found out too late just how far they are willing to go to have their reactionary agenda enacted.

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. K&R

Of course.

I find myself, in my dotage, recalling LBJ, and how he knew exactly how and when to twist arms, call in debts, dole out favors, call in the reserves when he needed back up, and made sure he had all the legislators in his pocket before he went into battle.

Obama needs to remember that he's the President. He's the one in charge, not the GOPigs.

It's ALL about him, yes...............

[ZombieHorde]

5. Obama is significantly better than FDR. nt

[mustardman]

6. Arrianna Huffington is a hypocrit

She likes to critize while offering no practical solutions of her own. She may know something about economics but doesn't seem to know much about how things get done in Washington. She critisizes Obama for not getting a clear message out while her OWN website regularly posts the GOP's smoke screen talking points to appease the reich and get their traffic volume up.

HYPOCRIT!

[Metta]

7. Yes. Too much Abe Lincoln, trying to unite the country.

Wake up before you miss more opportunities.

[MisterP]

9. Lincoln went to war not just to reunite the country, but to do so on his terms

Pres. Buchanan compromised and compromised--and ended up merely appeasing the Slave Power
the pre-1876 Republicans shattered or shackled the Dems and pushed through their own policies: Andrew Johnson is not remembered as some centrist, all-American hero for trying to slow Sumner's radical reformist faction

[jakeXT]

8. Reminds me of Larry Flint writing for the Huffington Post

The Huffington Post


Larry Flynt


Publisher of Hustler magazine and free speech advocate
Posted: August 20, 2009 08:15 PM


The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

This was never more obvious than with the Wall Street bailout, whereby the very corporations that caused the collapse of our economy were rewarded with taxpayer dollars. So arrogant, so smug were they that, without a moment's hesitation, they took our money -- yours and mine -- to pay their executives multimillion-dollar bonuses, something they continue doing to this very day. They have no shame. They don't care what you and I think about them. Henry Kissinger refers to us as "useless eaters."

But, you say, we have elected a candidate of change. To which I respond: Do these words of President Obama sound like change?

"A culture of irresponsibility took root, from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street."
There it is. Right there. We are Main Street. We must, according to our president, share the blame. He went on to say: "And a regulatory regime basically crafted in the wake of a 20th-century economic crisis -- the Great Depression -- was overwhelmed by the speed, scope and sophistication of a 21st-century global economy."

This is nonsense.

....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-sense-2009_b_264706.html?view=print

[pnorman]

10. When comparing Obama to FDR, please bear this in mind:

It was only in the latter years of FDR's first term, did he openly challenge his opponents in the manner related. Before then, he left as many options open as he could. Obama is in his what? Seventh month of his first term?

And bear this in mind: This isn't just about Health Care. The forces against him are determined to bring him down NOW, no matter the cost! They want to kill his perceived momentum, and then have the hired ankle-biters do the rest. Keep that in mind, and don't unthinkingly abet those assholes!


pnorman

[pnorman]

13. "... and then have their hired ankle-biters do the rest".

an apt illustration!

pnorman

[Edweird]

11. A little LBJ wouldn't hurt, either.