Score one for the president

After a lackluster first year that ended with the loss of a Senate seat in Massachusetts, President Obama decided to step into the political lions’ den this afternoon.

And by all accounts, he stepped out unscathed, having bloodied the big cats pretty badly.

The president met with Congressional Republicans this afternoon on the GOP’s home turf, in what The New York Times called “a session that resembled the British custom where a prime minister responds to questions in Parliament.”

Mr. Obama took questions from House Republicans, who pressed him on why he had disregarded their ideas and instead advanced what they called big government solutions rather than more surgical alternatives.

Mr. Obama replied that he did consider many of the suggestions they had made over the past year and incorporated some of them into his initiatives but found others unworkable or simply political posturing. Rejecting the notion that he had pushed a “Bolshevik plot” on America, he complained that Republicans had caricatured him as a radical, making it harder to then sit down and compromise.

Much of the Republican focus was on pushing Obama back on his heels, trying to make him look like the obstructionist in Washington’s gridlock culture.

President Obama, however, parried well, deflecting what were bogus claims — the GOP, after all, has been voting in lockstep, going so far as to engage in negotiations designed to mold legislation that they had no intention of voting for — with humor and more spine than his party has shown since it took over the majority in Congress three-plus years ago.

The question now is what comes next and will it mean an end to gridlock. And will it result in the kind of legislation that results in improvements to the lives of most Americans.

Politically, the president may have staunched the bleeding — by allowing the Q&A to happen on live TV, the Republicans gave him the opening he needed to answer their criticisms, to do so in a camera-friendly way that will play well on television.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet