One thing that we've learned about the President over the last five years is that he's not confrontational by nature: he doesn't have an "in your face" personality, except perhaps to his friends on the basketball court. He much prefers to prepare a place at the policy table for all of the "stakeholders," and let the competing factions iron out their differences to everyone's satisfaction. That's an admirable quality for a community organizer, but not so much when the "stakeholders" at the table are the same people who are stealing our homes, robbing our pensions, gouging us for health care, poisoning the nation's food supply, and triggering mass extinction events.
Sometimes, a President has to put comity aside, and make difficult decisions that are going to alienate some powerful and entrenched interests because the call of history demands it. Lyndon Johnson understood this when he pushed for a civil rights bill; he knew full well that his support would lose the South for Team Democrat for many years to come, and that many officeholders in his party would pay a price for it. But he also understood how Southern apartheid was tearing the nation asunder, with frightful human and economic costs, and that history would judge him harshly if he failed to act when he had the power to do so. Otherwise, as he said at the time, "What the hell's the Presidency for?"
---Baron V
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