Finally! No more Kumbaya moments for Obama with Republicans
MIAMI – The Washington Post has a brief column on the 114th Congress and bipartisanship. It deals with a serious issue – the expected executive order on immigration from President Obama this week. Columnist Chris Cillizza’s interpretation of Obama’s reaction I find almost hilarious.
Funny because Cillizza states that if the President signs the order it will probably have “explosive political consequences” and that the predictable outcome of the expected move on immigration is that any hope of bipartisanship in the new congress would be out the window. This is all information easy to deduce if one has been following congress. In fact, I can’t remember the last time there was true bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress – not even the Senate, where gentlemanly decorum is supposed to happen. (I think it may have been during the Reagan presidency…)
But what had me in stitches is that Cillizza writes that Obama does not seem to care about the possible outcome because he “has made the calculation that the chances of genuine bipartisanship on virtually anything was so low in the first place that it didn’t make sense not to do what he believes is the right thing.”
And I ask: It took President Obama almost six years to come to that realization?
Cillizza adds that President Obama “views the ‘now the well is poisoned’ point being made by Republicans as laughable.” Actually, I consider Obama’s slowness to react (to almost anything political) what might be considered laughable if it wasn’t for the fact that in this case, for example, it will allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to avoid deportation. A decision the President has finally taken (we hope) where he’d rather err on the side of family unity and simple humanity.
Let us hope he follows through on this order that millions are hoping for.
[To the reader: How many times have we seen the type of photo above of the President with Speaker John Boehner on one side and now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the other in what appears to be a false kumbaya moment?]