{"id":3624,"date":"2010-02-05T14:45:08","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T19:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3624"},"modified":"2010-02-05T14:45:08","modified_gmt":"2010-02-05T19:45:08","slug":"franken-ly-als-got-a-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3624\/franken-ly-als-got-a-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Franken-ly, Al’s Got a Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chief knock on President Obama\u2019s congressional management style is that he doesn\u2019t have one. From the stimulus bill to health care \u201creform,\u201d The One and advisors like David Axelrod are amazingly \u201caloof,\u201d \u201cdisengaged,\u201d or as Senator Al Franken (D-MN) put it in a closed door session this week, unwilling to provide leadership on how to close a deal<\/a>. Franken was responding to Obama\u2019s call to \u201cfinish the job\u201d after which the latter gave no indication how to do it. According to reports, Franken\u2019s frustration was shared by other senators.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s hands-off approach seems odd for two reasons. First, it\u2019s unusual for any politician to deflect an opportunity to take center stage, especially when the praise of passage would accrue to him. The other reason is that Obama is a Saul Alinsky disciple well versed in the master community organizer\u2019s chief work, \u201cRules for Radicals.\u201d One of the tenets of the book is \u201cnever go outside the experience of your people.\u201d For a Democratic Senate without the presence of the late Ted Kennedy, that means don\u2019t bank on any of the remaining 59 senators being able to negotiate and pass landmark legislation. None of them have a track record for doing it.<\/p>\n

Then again, neither does Obama. The cold reality for activists like Franken is that those put in charge by the Left don\u2019t have the experience, and frankly the ability, to get major legislation passed. That Ted Kennedy did so for decades without inspiring any of his fellow Democrats to take notes speaks to the single-minded emphasis of progressive strategists on getting power instead of figuring out how to use it. Republicans should take heed: it\u2019s not enough to win because thereafter, you have to govern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The chief knock on President Obama\u2019s congressional management style is that he doesn\u2019t have one. From the stimulus bill to health care \u201creform,\u201d The One and advisors like David Axelrod are amazingly \u201caloof,\u201d \u201cdisengaged,\u201d or as Senator Al Franken (D-MN) put it in a closed door session this week, unwilling to provide leadership on how […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[771,143,810],"class_list":["post-3624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-al-franken","tag-barack-obama","tag-ted-kennedy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3624"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3628,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3624\/revisions\/3628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}