Can The Sane Man Save The Crazy People?

Andrew Sullivan makes a plea to President Obama:

And somehow I suspect that at that nadir for Reagan, commentators like Krauthammer and Gerson and Brooks would not be advising him to heed public opinion, give up on his agenda, and recognize that it’s madness to push through policies that were broadly unpopular. Au contraire. Fight, Mr President. Fight. In the end, even the conservatives – perhaps especially the conservatives – will respect you for it.

Today, he quotes the President’s speech in Ohio. He is fighting:

… So if I was trying to take the path of least resistance, I would have done something a lot easier. But I’m trying to solve the problems that folks here in Ohio and across this country face every day. And I’m not going to walk away just because it’s hard. We are going to keep on working to get this done — with Democrats, I hope with Republicans — anybody who’s willing to step up. Because I’m not going to watch more people get crushed by costs or denied care they need by insurance company bureaucrats. I’m not going to have insurance companies click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket because once again there’s no control on what they do. So long as I have some breath in me, so long as I have the privilege of serving as your President, I will not stop fighting for you.

From watching the President all year – not to mention the 18 months before the November 2008 Election – I find myself surprised that other people are surprised that it has taken Obama this long to take a confrontational tone. That has never been his style. He has been inspirational, yes, and I believe that there are a lot of confrontational liberals who projected that personality onto him, but those who pay attention know that Obama shows a distaste for this kind of politics. Unfortunately, being the only sane person in a city-full of crazy people doesn’t get any results, and the President has, I think, finally figured that out.

The President is a really smart man, and unlike the last President we had, is ok with admitting mistakes. From Obama’s interview with George Stephanopoulos:

And, you know, If there’s one thing that I regret this year, is that we were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us, that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values. And that I do think is a mistake of mine. I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here –

STEPHANOPOULOS: That people would get it.

OBAMA: That people will get it. And I think that, you know, what they’ve ended up seeing is this feeling of remoteness and detachment where, you know, there’s these technocrats up here, these folks who are making decisions.

He believed that if he just ran the country competently (which he undoubtedly has), then people would appreciate him for it and he wouldn’t have to play the ugly side of politics. Too bad he is still the single sane man in the crazy town of Washington. Or maybe its a good thing for him. Massachusetts can be a wake-up call. The silver-lining. He now has an incentive to fight. Not just for health care reform, but for his presidency and what he wants it to represent. In the words of Sullivan: “Fight, Mr. President. Fight”.