Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

That Chris Christie, a Heck of a Guy

J. Christian Watts
1 Nov 2012

So, we have created a soap opera here in the last few days. Chris Christie has emerged as a bipartisan figure. As a savior of the President. As a slayer of Mittens the ever more desperate and lying candidate. Andrea Mitchell sat with baited breath, “Will Chris Christie hug the President? What will it mean?”

WTF? Have we gotten so desperate for one single Republican not to act like a douche bag 24/7 that a guy saying, the President of the United States – one of the single most accomplished pols in the modern history of the US – is doing a good job is somehow newsworthy? Barack Obama isn’t George Bush. He isn’t stunned by complex information or data, and he’s not taking naps while the world floods. And he isn’t going to tell Brownie that he’s doing a heck of a job when he’s not. Barack Obama is competent. He’s better than competent — he’s skilled. He’s better than skilled; he is actually fantastic at his job.

But somehow Chris Christie — who isn’t, by the way, particularly good at his own job, — saying that the President is fantastic, is like the Sermon on the Mount? Seriously? Really? Again, WTF?

[ Video here -

! ]

What you are seeing is the reaction to four years of psychotic hatred for Obama by the Right. Four years during which even basic, functional, easy issues of governance got a lunatic reaction based on GOP hate. What you are seeing is the most common dross of bipartisan interaction; a State crushed by a natural disaster and the Federal Government reaching out to help – competently.

That isn’t news. At least it shouldn’t be. What we have here is an example of two phenomena. First, the Medea Syndrome, where the GOP hates O more than they love America, and as such, like Medea who drowned her children to punish her unfaithful husband in the Euripides play, have done everything in their power to damage America so that President Obama would lose. Second, the cracks in the dam the President has been predicting once he wins have already started.

The President is right. The GOP is going to crack. If they still hold the House, personally, I have my doubts they will but they have a massive advantage right now, they will move simply because after the election there are structural things that will improve the economy. If the GOP doesn’t get onboard to take credit for some of the recovery then in 2014/16 they will be forced to defend their bad positions the way Mitt Romney has been forced to defend his opposition to the auto bailout.

The economy is going to create around 12 million jobs in the next four years. Obamacare is going to be massively successful and wildly more affordable, and when people realize they are saving about $5,000 per family of four, they are going to wonder, “Why the heck did the GOP try to block this again?”

The GOP is going to need some wins on social issues too. They’ve lost DADT, DOMA, and Dream Act credibility. What they are left with is black empowerment and joblessness, the Farm Bill, Immigration Reform, and Wall Street regulation. There is going to have to be some social issue on which they can find common ground, the obvious choice is immigration. It greatly benefits them.

However, the power has shifted with O’s likely win, and our expansion in the Senate. Let me briefly explain why the President was in such a disadvantaged position for the first four years, including when we had majorities in the House and Senate.

Crisis. The US was falling off the cliff. People forget how bad it was right before President Obama won election. They forget how catastrophic it was. Let me personalize this a little. I got a call from a friend of mine on a Friday morning telling me to have my father empty his Wachovia accounts. He said there was a 50/50 chance the bank would collapse and that federal insurers were going to be months returning people’s money. He told me he was talking about a run on Wachovia that would exceed the FDIC insured amounts and that would be catastrophic.

Another friend told me to buy gold. That the banking system was going to collapse in three weeks. That it was teetering on the edge and that being liquid was going to be dangerous. These were not conspiracy nuts; they were people I have known for 20 years who work on Wall Street, who are never ever sick at sea. These were people I trust to invest my money, the money of my family, whom I see every holiday and reunion, who have kids I actually know. They were hysterical. They cascading problems were one moment, one mistake, one mistimed decision away from cascading irrevocable collapse. Goldman was owed Billions by AIG, but AIG itself was in every pension plan in America, in one form or another. Bank of America, Citi, Wachovia, Wells Fargo, a few others, could all have gone under. The ripple effect of one going under would have been bad but as I just said, it would have been a cascade, like dominoes lined up on their edge falling one after the other.

The last global depression led to two world wars. Tens of millions (not exaggerating) people dead, and the only use of nuclear weapons. Imagine what a global depression would do now in a bigger populated world that is also smaller and more interconnected.

The US was going to be unable to send out SS checks. Pension funds were going to collapse, meaning that retirees were going to be unable to pay any bills. The overall structure of our economy was fragmenting.

Enter President Obama and a GOP conspiring to sabotage him. Republicans now down play the crisis. They also down play the weakness of George Bush in doing nothing, taking, and making zero hard decisions after TARP in the fall of ’08.

Suddenly we have the DOW in the 6,000s. We have the epic unbelievable, collapse of credit markets. We have the collapse of everything. The President started governing from hour one. And he did it without any buy in from the GOP. None. He went for a 1.1 trillion stim bill and was told it couldn’t get out of the Senate. That the GOP was going to filibuster it.

Think about that for a moment. We’re collapsing as a nation and the GOP is filibustering the bill that will save us? We were never in a politically free moment, a moment where the nation came together to support the President. The other side, humiliated and crushed in the general election and in the Senate and House elections, still played politics as though nothing was different, as though nothing were going on in the larger US Economy.

Because of that and because we didn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate, the President was forced to compromise with the conservative Dems and the liberal republicans. On everything. Let me do the game theory real quick.

If the GOP/conservatives get what they want, they win. If the President gets what he wants, he wins. If nothing is done at all, the GOP wins. So, the President wins if he gets a bill, the GOP wins if they get their bill or no bill. Two out of three possible outcomes favor the GOP; one outcome favors the President. That’s it. That’s the leverage of the entire first term.

You will hear a lot of talk about why the President didn’t leverage Dem senators and “make” them support him? Look at an electoral map. Ten Dem Senators were from states the President lost, some by double digits. Ted Kennedy, God rest his soul, was dying and not in the Senate, Sen. Byrd, likewise, was also dying, and was sporadic in attendance. Arlen Specter was a Republican still, and Al Franken hadn’t been seated. Oh, and Joe Lieberman was still devolving in to a professional ahole. Not much help from him. That isn’t even close to a super majority in the senate, and that was the new normal until Ted Kennedy died, Al Franken was seated, and Arlen switched sides.

I am not making excuses for the President’s negotiation style, which I like and others hate, I am not asking for or pleading for understanding, President Obama is a professional, he can take the hits. What I am trying to do is contextualize why it seems so grand so wonderful so amazing that Gov. Christie is doing the basic, functional, rational thing and saying that a President who is doing a fantastic job is actually doing a fantastic job.

The GOP has been so hateful and dishonest that a person just stating the truth as truth seems like a prophet or a traitor. Just saying water is wet and the sky is blue isn’t a profile in courage. It is simple, factual, reporting of conditions. The President is good at crisis management. He is never sick at sea. He’s strong in all the metrics of leadership.

Peace,

J.


http://www.jackandjillpolitics.com/2012/11/that-chris-christie-a-heck-of-a-guy/

You know I never thought of it this way . .but he's right! ..;( I'm glad Christie threw him the well deserved kudos but it's really sick that we all had to hang on to it so much ... we know how great Obama is and we didn't need 'just' chris christy to tell us .. ! ... We'll take it ! ..........but they can STUFF IT!