Thursday, September 3, 2009

The Sound of One Hand Clapping: How Barack Obama's push for bipartisanship is beginning to tarnish his Presidency


One of the risks of being proficient in something is that there are folks who look to take advantage of your skill for their own personal gain.

I'll never forget Tyrell Watkins in the 6th grade. He was the slickest kid in the class. Popular. Flashy. Dumb as a rock. But Tyrell had personality, persistence and overwhelming people skills which meant that he never wrote a page of homework in 12 years on the planet. So it was either by pure coincidence or through a shady backroom deal brokered by this pre-teen that he was selected to be my science lab partner for the duration of the semester. Ah...the nerd and the cool kid, forced to work together. One was the Class Science Officer, the other could throw a baseball really hard and bench press twice his weight. It's the stuff of cheesy 80s sitcoms.

That's not quite how it worked.

Our mandatory homework and lab meetings went something like this:

Watkins: Hey, nerd. Do my homework or I'll break your leg.
Me: That's Tyrell with two 'L's, right?

And such was my lot in life for the bulk of the school year. Alone in a room, plagiarising myself and bowing down to a bully even though I had the authority and all the right answers.

As a skinny, bookish kid at P.S. 96 in Spanish Harlem, who knew that I was the physical embodiment of today's Democratic Party.

The role of Tyrell Watkins will be played today by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus who just intimated that while the Democrats control the White House, have a mythical Supermajority in Congress and have infused new life into the Supreme Court, that the prospect for the passage of a public option on healthcare reform is all but dead. What's that you say? Wouldn't it stand to reason that a party who controls most of the upper levels of the federal government should be able to swiftly and easily pass legislation that it wants? Sure. But it's the Multiple Personality Democrats we're talking about here. The ones who march and stomp and protest and get up in arms when out of power only to kowtow, bend, fold and break when they are actually IN power.

President Obama. Please don't follow that legacy and the tendencies of your hand-wringing, second-guessing, ameliorating brethren on the Left. Stand tall. Stand firm. Stand up for the 46 million Americans in this country who are uninsured or underinsured who are one illness away from financial ruin, many of whom actually die from lack of care

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