OBAMA’S MISSED OPPORTUNITY FOR BREAKING GRIDLOCK
In this sixth year of a broken presidency, even unabashedly liberal commentators like Frank Bruni and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times have come to decry the listless, unfocused, drifting nature of Barack Obama’s leadership.
In response, presidential apologists blame Republicans for the present paralysis since their stubborn hostility made compromise and progress impossible. Actually, this argument ignores the biggest missed opportunity of the Obama presidency: his failure to support the bold 2010 recommendations of the bi-partisan Simpson-Bowles Commission to solve our long-term fiscal crisis and restore budget sanity to Washington. Had the president backed the commission he himself established we would not only have a stronger footing for our economy, but a more cooperative, results-oriented atmosphere in Washington in place of today’s hyper-polarization.
The President wasted his chance and now he, and the country, face the consequences.