According to news reports, Israel is on the verge of finalizing a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah, the implementation of which is anticipated to take place next Wednesday. As Haaretz reports,
[o]ne possible obstacle to the cabinet’s approval is the terms of the current deal, which go against promises the state made to Arad’s family when it redeemed Elhanan Tenenbaum in 2004 – not to release Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar without also obtaining substantive information about Arad’s fate.
To keep its word to Arad’s family, this government now has three options: the first would be to keep the promise and, in the wake of Hezbollah’s vague report on Arad’s fate, call the whole thing off. The second would be to explain to the Arad family that the imperatives of state demand the return of Israel’s captive soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, dead or alive, even if the cost is breaking a promise made four years ago to the Arad family. Then of course, there is the third option – stick to the deal with Hezbollah and challenge the meaning of the word “substantive,” thereby pretending that this government kept all its commitments.
The first choice might consign Regev and Goldwasser – or their remains – to the same fate of Arad. The second choice would give those two families a peace of mind which this very same act might forever deny to the Arad family. And the third course of action would be spin.
Which course of action do you think Olmert will embrace? I suspect playing with words will be it.
“The President’s personal popularity does not earn him a pass with the American people.”
Well, not with Dr. Samuelson and Neocomradess Gibbs, anyway.
Happy days.
i can think of more than a few republicans who like the idea of declaring nancy pelosi the ‘real’ president…
…after all, it didn’t turn out so well for newt, did it…
…it’s not unfair to observe, however, that if the democratic congressional leadership is seen as ‘winning’ over the obama white house, we are going to have a very, very, very interesting 2010 election….
1994ish…?
The problem for Obama is that to change this pork-a-thon into a real stimulus package is like turning a ship in the harbor. Too many of his allies think that, basically, all spending is stimulative. (See, e.g., Joe Klein, who bizzarrely seems to think this whole stimulus debate is going well for the Dems.) They’ve deluded themselves into thinking there’s no such thing as bad government spending – now they can’t change course.
The problem with this entire analysis is that presumes that Obama is oppose to the provisions in the bill! He is for everything that’s in the so-called stimulus! He wasn’t rated the most liberal member of the Senate for nothing! His gambit was to get the GOP to give this monstrosity cover with their votes. Now there is a real possibility that they aren’t going to go along. Though it also seems Obama doesn’t care with his manuevering to get the 60th vote in the Senate, with the New Hampshire seat. So the analysis presumes something that’s not true, that Obama is a moderate and is being pushed to the left. I say he is already on the left and won’t budge. Mistaking his platitudes and words for moderation is a mistake I’ve seen over and over again in the media. It’s time everyone wises up and realize that this man is a real blue lefty.
Pelosi puts out a bill Republicans hate. Obama “steps in” to make the bill more bipartisan. Message to GOP: I, Barack Obama, am the only thing standing between you and Nanci Pelosi’s unfettered Dem vision. GOP takes its crumbs, votes for an even bigger spending package than the one they previously rejected, and takes a victory lap for standing up to Dems.
Except Obama wins. And Pelosi wins.
And Jennifer Rubin gets played like a fiddle by all sides by buying into the charade.
“And we will get a glimpse of Harry Reid’s statesmanship.”
Has he shown this at some point in the past when I was away?.
i think jerry’s analyis is too cynical but 3/4s….
…isn’t it possible, you know, that the republicans – many of whom believe a stimulus is, in fact, necessary – actually succeed in pushing a much better bill?
the idea that the minority party – which, in case you hadn’t noticed – also lost the white house, is going to be a big winner simply flies in the face of reality…
if principled opposition leads to a dramatically better bill, then good for republicans and good for the country…and perhaps more than a few of the folks who thought a democratic white house/congress was a good idea may cast rather different votes come november 2010,,,
The other party controls both houses of Congress and the White House. Republicans will be utter fools if they give the Democrats cover for a bad plan. Let the Democrats pass their plan and then see how events roll out between now and November 2010.
Government figures of all stripes across the country are in favor of the “stimulus” because they feel it will pass in some extravagant form and some of the lucre will ooze its way down to their little empire. They can’t turn that away, not if everyone else is going to get it.
As a candidate it was so easy, wasn’t it, to be all things to all people? When the only thing you run is your mouth, and your mouth runs so smoothly, its easy to make everyone think you’re running their way. Being Barack meant never having to make decisions.
Now he has a decision, and each option serves different purposes:
REVISING the bill serves his short-term political/electoral interests. Obama appears more statesmanlike, and burnishes his postpartisan image, if he forces the Dems to cut the pork, adds more genuine infrastructure spending and pushes at least a little back toward the 40% that he claimed he wanted for tax cuts. His approval rating would rise 10 points. He would earn plaudits from Republicans and build leverage with them for later battles. He also gains the cover of bipartisanship if the bill fails. If Obama really wants for his to be a transformative Presidency, that reaches beyond those invidious tribal lines, then he should revise the bill. What would it cost him? Some on the left (like Dionne) would bemoan that he’s elevating process (bipartisanship) over product (a less liberal, and therefore weaker, bill). But it’s not like they’re going to become Republicans. The real cost would be in enduring the fire-breathing fury of Nancy Pelosi and the other House bosses.
CHAMPIONING the bill serves his ideological interests, and probably serves the long-term interests of forging a permanent political realignment leftward. Obama believes that these are worthy spending projects, and wants to expand the services of government. By championing the bill through to the end, he gets to fund liberal pet projects all around the country, and thus earn the favor of many representatives, governors and mayors whose requests were approved. More importantly, he lavishes money on the traditional liberal constituencies, rewards the unions and PACs that gave him more money than any candidate in history, and further strengthens the Democrats’ hold over minority voters and those who live on the expanded government dole.
My guess: He champions the bill. “My Republican colleagues will acknowledge I did everything I could to work with them; but unfortunately they have chosen to play politics, and this is just too important a matter for me to compromise on what best serves this country.” Even if he sustained the postpartisan illusion a little longer, it would inevitably fade, as big battles loom over entitlements and the inevitable clashes over foreign affairs and “cultural” (read: ethical) issues. Even if the Republicans lauded him now, they would sour on him before the midterms. He can reward his liberal supporters now, enroll more on the ever-lengthening list of those who depend upon a liberal government for a check, and later he can return to the statesmanlike postpartisan role. Ruthless in the first term, moving the majority leftward; statesmanlike in the second term, cementing his legacy.
Agree with #7
The stakes are too high to play politics.
Make the bill better and the Republicans would have done their job.
But better certainly does not mean bigger!
Oh J-Rube – take off theose republican-red glasses. Republican governors are already lining up for stimulus cash – a huge bulk of it – and Obama is already getting out the massive email lists to demonize the suddenly fiscal conservatives – who never met an exploding pentagon budget they couldn’t prostate themselves for. As more layoffs stunn the country, and the financial news worsens, Right-wing websites are more concerned about the Obama/Rush feud, than the sinking ship they’re trying to navigate.
Oh yeah, pollster.com has Obama at 71 percent favorable – go take a peek at how your republicans are doing…
here’s from Pew research of late last week:
As Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress battle over President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package, the latest survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press finds the Democratic Party with a vast favorability advantage over the GOP. More than six-in-ten Americans (62%) say they have a positive opinion of the Democratic Party, compared with 40% who say they have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party.
yeah – I’m sure Obama is really concerned…
Interesting how The Voice said ‘there is no time to waste’.
Hurry up, pass it or we’re all dead.
We’ve heard that one before.
Am I the only one who thinks this guy is in way over his head, and has become nothing but a (mellifluous) spokesperson for his advisers? That he doesn’t have a clue, really, about anything? Just like he has no deeply held beliefs about anything.
He is all about self serving expediency and narcissistic attempts to fill an identity void.
I have to hand it to him though. He has parlayed a voice, a skin color, and platitudes about hopenchange into the biggest job in the world.
Obama has deeply held beliefs, but they’re about needing to kill more babies not making this a better country.
“Am I the only one who thinks this guy is in way over his head, and has become nothing but a (mellifluous) spokesperson for his advisers?”
You’re not the only one – there’s still a few of you out there in the fly-overs..read your betters – they might not like Obama – but the smart ones – like Krapphammer, respect him…
Warpublican Review, if you could drop the childish name-calling, you might actually find yourself in an adult political discussion.
Ahithophel describes the two options before Obama clearly. My reading of the Prez is that he’s all about having his cake and eating it, too. He will therefore revise as much as he calculates serves him politically, and champion the result, which will conform, he will tell us, to what he’s “always” said he wanted. If the economy recovers, he wants to be in position to argue for credit. If the economy doesn’t recover, no one will blame honeybee insurance, and we enter into an unpredictable, potentially even more polarized political situation – with external events also potentially playing a critical, if not always directly acknowledged role. Just to name one of many dominoes (from China round the world to Russia and back to China again), what if Europe is already heading the way of Iceland by this Summer, or at any rate by the Summer of 2010?
The thing about the crazies like Warpub is that they only argue the politics of the situation. Well, he’s right – Obama can get this passed and will in some form.
But is that the best thing for the country? No one outside of the Pelosi- fringe thinks so.
The Democrats won so they get their big bill, but its not a stimulus bill. Its a Democrat feeding frenzy bill.
You want to build infrastructre – spend money on infrastructure projects that can be built now – not three years from now.
You want real tax cuts – have a payroll tax cut that puts money in people’s pockets now and helps small businesses stay afloat, buy more and hopefully hire more.
Instead of the grab bag of pork created by the Pelosi gang.
Hopefully saner heads will prevail.
No, I don’t think he is in over his head – well he might be, but that will come in foreign affairs where his first foray was a mild disaster already. He is a leftist politician who doesn’t believe in free markets. His stimulus won’t, few deny that now. And while his popularity is high, the dems in congress don’t have the same lofty levels of appreciation and there is no longer a majority of citizens who think the stimulus bill in its present form is a good idea, and it might now be a majority think it is bad.
WarPub has the problem as all partisians have, just like the GOPers before when they held all branches of government, they think they know it all and assume those who disagree are whack jobs. How many fiscal conservatives did Obama pick up with his wish to end Washington as normal?. They are all gone – and the house dem majority will shrink because the reason they hated the GOP is now being played out by the dems. Remember the old Reagan era commercial with the dems driving a car and ignoring that fact they were running out of gas? We will see it again. Obama’s coattails were one day – GOP has won everything since.
I fully expect the clowns in the Senate to screw up the current advantage the GOP has politically on this issue. So expecting a bigger more expensive bill figures to be accurate. WarPub is just noise, I would ignore him until he actually has something to say. Right now, his guy is squandering an advantage of massive proportions, that must hurt.