The Most Frustrating Part

In a column published yesterday, economist/blogger/Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman nicely summarized what's been so frustrating about watching the recent developments in U.S. politics. The entirety of the article is definitely worth a read, but here's the part that really resonated with me:

"But there’s a point at which realism shades over into weakness, and progressives increasingly feel that the administration is on the wrong side of that line. It seems as if there is nothing Republicans can do that will draw an administration rebuke: Senator Charles E. Grassley feeds the death panel smear, warning that reform will “pull the plug on grandma,” and two days later the White House declares that it’s still committed to working with him.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Indeed, no sooner were there reports that the administration might accept co-ops as an alternative to the public option than G.O.P. leaders announced that co-ops, too, were unacceptable."

That's it, exactly. Maybe it's a Canadian thing, but I'm always in favour of solutions that take both sides' points-of-view into consideration... where both sides have something sensible to say! What I'm seeing down south these days, though, is a very different situation. It's more akin to the irksome child who constantly whines about wanting ice cream but then, upon getting some, complains that it's not his favourite flavour and anyway, what he really wants is cake. Kids like that need to be ignored, rather than catered to, and the Obama administration really needs to learn that lesson. After all, Republicans go on the record every day as believing that governments never accomplish anything, and then they go out and try to prove themselves right. That's not the sort of strategy that anyone with a brain ought to be listening to.