WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised to change Washington's ways. Yet he's as caught up in them as ever.
As the week began, Obama kicked off his re-election bid with a sunny video of people talking about their hopes and needs, the very image of life outside Washington politics.
By week's end, Obama was mired in budget negotiations, canceling trips and scrambling to stave off a government shutdown that could only undermine the public's faith in his leadership.
It was the messy business of governing, and how it's going to be in this long campaign for incumbent Obama.
Beyond the vision for economic competitiveness he wants to talk about, Obama is chasing a second term while trying to make a deeply divided government work. He got bogged down in legislative tactics in his first two years, even when he won fights on health care and other issues.
The goal now is to avoid all that. He can't.
In this test of leadership, the White House says Obama wrangled the budget compromise he wanted, spending cuts he supported without shelving his priorities or accepting unacceptable policy changes.
His administration portrayed it as an example of bipartisan cooperation of the highest stakes.
Yet the government was on the brink of closing, and many people were wondering how that could happen, or why.
This is change?
The showdown was a reminder that for all a president's powers, there's much beyond control. Think Libya, Egypt, Japan's earthquake, not to mention Iraq and Afghanistan.
In this case, the new House Republican majority, led by Speaker John Boehner, seized on a must-pass budget bill to give voice to frustrated voters and tea party conservatives who demanded spending cuts.
It was brinksmanship mode again in the capital, where nothing gets done until the deadline. Sometimes not even then.
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন