PICAYUNE —
“We’re all in this together,” President Obama said on election night. “That’s how we campaigned.”
A week later, responding to noise and squabbles about the word “mandate,” Obama responded: “I’ve got one mandate. I’ve got a mandate to help middle-class families and families that are working hard to try to get into the middle class. That’s my mandate.”
Let’s put this in context. In 2004, George W. Bush claimed voters had given him “political capital” that he was “going to spend.” President Obama surpassed — by a lot — his predecessor in both the popular and electoral vote count. If Bush had a “mandate,” so does Obama. But Obama now faces a lame-duck session of Congress that acts as if the election never happened.
Rarely in history has a lame-duck Congress been so lame as the one that’s leaving now. This Congress — many of whose members won’t return — did less than Harry Truman’s infamous “Do Nothing Congress” of 1947-1949. This Congress couldn’t agree on anything, even failing to pass a cybersecurity bill essential to the nation’s security. The very first vote of the lame-duck senators was to reject the same bill for a second time — along partisan lines.
The loser of the 2008 election, Sen. John McCain, was back front and center. In sharply partisan language, he called for the appointment of a “super committee” to investigate the deaths of four brave Americans in Libya, including our ambassador. An old soldier and patriot, McCain seems to have forgotten the blame lies with the radical Muslims who conducted a surprise attack on our consulate. Congress is careening toward a so-called fiscal cliff. Why would McCain choose partisanship, especially when a bipartisan investigation by highly regarded security experts is still forming its conclusions?
Habit, perhaps. Old habits die hard. This lame-duck Congress just can’t seem to break its knee-jerk partisanship. It’s a failing that those who were re-elected may have to account for in the 2014 congressional elections. NBC news quoted Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who won a second term last Tuesday, as saying, “The main message I heard throughout the state ... is they expect folks to go back to Washington and work together — I heard that over and over again.”
The president agrees. Obama struck a moderate tone in his press conference, claiming his only mandate was to help the middle class. He avoided chest-beating and any “my way or the highway” talk. The president said he was open to compromise and new ideas. He also suggested that Mitt Romney might help come up with some good ideas for fiscal growth.
Indeed, the president, who spent the week reaching out to labor leaders, the business community and others, is eager to find common-sense solutions to resolve our nation’s fiscal crisis.
“So we’ve got a clear majority of the American people who recognize if we’re going to be serious about deficit reduction, we’ve got to do it in a balanced way,” Obama explained.
True words. Exit polls show a majority of voters (60 percent, including both Democrats and Republicans) agree with Obama. They favor a balanced approach to reducing the national deficit — one that includes both spending cuts and raising tax rates and revenues from wealthy taxpayers.
Though voters hunger for bipartisan solutions and cooperation, Obama’s biggest hurdle may be to change the atmosphere. Outgoing Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts grieved the loss of moderates who made compromise possible. Given his voting record, Brown himself probably doesn’t qualify as one. But he’s right. Moderate senators like Olympia Snowe, Joe Lieberman, Richard Lugar and Kent Conrad have either retired or lost bids for re-election.
Polling reveals a yearning for Congress to cooperate and address our urgent national needs, but also an increasingly partisan division, even among the wealthy. The voters can’t have it both ways.
The increased polarization results, I believe, from a Republican strategy that hasn’t changed in four years, namely conducting an unrelenting assault on Obama as being 100 percent wrong all the time. Republican leaders have more excuses than a teenager for their refusal to reach any compromise. As the election shows, though, they ignore at their peril Obama’s mandate to help restore the middle class.
The pace of change may be moderate, but it will be change that folks can believe in and get behind. We will have to be patient and we — all of us — will have to remain engaged, calling on our lawmakers to work together.
The president has a mandate — one he will use for the common good. The press and the public need to keep their focus on the moderate change Obama is seeking, and not be distracted by partisan red-herring investigations or salacious sex scandals that will only weaken our unity.
(Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News.)
Columns
Obama’s mandate is to help middle class
- Columns
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Hood’s ‘open carry’ ruling strikes important balances
Attorney General Jim Hood’s office issued an opinion this week that went a long way toward establishing some order and applying some common sense to what has become a contentious and confusing debate both for proponents and opponents of free exercise of the Second Amendment.
House Bill 2, which becomes law July 1, was authored and led to passage by state Rep. Andy Gipson, R-Braxton. Gipson has told the press that he believed the legislation was necessary to clearly define what a concealed weapon is under the law and to distinguish between “concealed carry” and “open carry” rights. But many law enforcement officers charged with enforcing the state’s “concealed carry” law and other contradictory statutes, the bill created some confusion and Hood’s AG opinion brought some clarity to the ongoing debate. -
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- Vocability Words can be both familiar and extremely confusing when taken from their usual context. Ask any wine enthusiast about legs, fat or bricks and they may assume you are speaking “Vinonese.” Ok — I made that word up; but the language of wine does indeed include legs, fat and brix which have entirely different meanings from what you might assume. Working with definitions from http://www.wineschool.com/vocabulary.html, try your basic knowledge of “Vinonese.”
- Vocability Words can set a tone for a situation, alter someone’s perception of an individual or group — in short, there is power in them. The Bible cautions, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue...” — Proverbs in 18:21, ASB. With that in mind, I will be focusing on words, some recently used and some obscure, to test the readers and build on what you already know. There will be theme weeks, for instance next week will focus on words involving wine — for no particular reason! So try your vocabulary skills with the following and see how you score. I’m always open to suggestions for material.
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A hard rain is gonna fall...
By Kathryn Jean Lopez/Syndicated columnist
After disappearing during his term in office and bringing scandal to his family and state, former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford is going to Washington, having won election to Congress. And that’s far from the worst story reflecting the current character of our nation.
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Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
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While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008. -
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists
When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”
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Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing. - More Columns Headlines
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