Obama followup and After the S&P Downgrade

One thing I want to add to my last post is that Obama is still failing on his story telling. I recall from the tapes on his recent speeches him saying something about trying to fix things instead of demonizing his opponents. The problems are that he has NOT been fixing things and that sometimes you have to call a spade a spade! Call out the Tea Party Republicans for being the cause of the S&P downgrade. Though no fingers were directly pointed, "S&P senior director Joydeep Mukherji said the stability and effectiveness of American political institutions were undermined by the fact that “people in the political arena were even talking about a potential default,” Mukherji said. “That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable,” he added."

The problem is that some conservatives are trying to point the finger at Obama's administration, claiming those in the administration were the ones saying how not raising the debt ceiling would lead to disaster (default), while the Tea Party was saying default would not happen if the debt ceiling were not raised. See? The Tea Party wasn't talking about default because they were saying the treasury would just have to make cuts elsewhere in order to keep paying off the debt. So, this S&P rep couldn't be talking about them.

Now, most reasonable people recognize this for the absurdity it is. While the Tea Party may be correct, to even suggest putting the treasury in a pick-and-choose situation really isn't much better than suggesting default. To use an analogy, the Tea Party was suggesting we test the edge of the metaphorical cliff, whereas the Obama administration was wanting to steer far and clear from such a posibility. So how is it that the S&P rep was talking about the Obama administration and not the Tea Party?

Back to the original point, Obama needs to drop this idea that he needs to avoid demonizing his political opponents. First, there is nothing wrong with TELLING THE TRUTH about who the villian is in the story (as pointed out in the Westen piece). Second, even if he tries to portray himself as the "adult," his opponents are going to keep acting like children. I think most parents (which I am not) realize that acting like an adult around children does nothing to stop them from acting like children. Yet, this seems to be the approach Obama has been taking and will continue to take.