Someone actually wrote this

(We extracted the below from our Quickies post yesterday as we wanted to give it a little broader circulation)

From the New York Times:

It’s so ironic, people. The national electorate is totally turned off by partisan standoffs. You can almost hear the public imploring, will you guys please just make some back-room deals? And, at that same moment, the Republican candidates are being pushed into being more and more intractable.

(italics, someone)


That someone is Gail Collins, columnist for the Times.

Can we officially stick a fork in Hopenchange? We knew it to be a farce all along but America's newspaper of record is, in print, championing business as usual.

What's ironic, Gail, is that Obama's two greatest legislative accomplishments were fashioned in the manner for which you are pining. Porkulus (aka: the American Recovery Act) and to a much greater degree, ObamaCare, were epitomized by back room deals, bribes, kick-backs and business as usual politics.

How sad that the Hopenchange set has been reduced to supporting the most shamelessly cynical politician in our lifetime.

If Bill Clinton was shamelessly cynical, and he was, he at least had the political sense to realize that to build his legacy he would have to work with the opposition party to achieve legislative goals that were popular with a majority of Americans (see: welfare reform and NAFTA).

If the current occupier of the Oval Office wins a second term, will he have a similar instinct? At this point, we have seen nothing in his behavior pattern that would suggest he is anything but a hard-line ideologue. Intractable, to use Collins' words.