In the coming weeks, members of Congress will vote on whether we should require universal background checks for anyone who wants to buy a gun so that criminals or people with severe mental illnesses can’t get their hands on one. They’ll vote on tough new penalties for anyone who buys guns only to turn around and sell them to criminals. They’ll vote on a measure that would keep weapons of war and high-capacity ammunition magazines that facilitate these mass killings off our streets. They’ll get to vote on legislation that would help schools become safer and help people struggling with mental health problems to get the treatment that they need.
Excerpt: “We Have Not Forgotten” - President Obama on Protecting Our Children from Gun Violence (by whitehouse)
Barack Obama 2013 Presidential Inauguration - Complete (by TheNewYorkTimes)
‘The Dean campaign was a great, pioneering effort, but it happened too soon. In 2003, there were 55 million households in the United States with Internet access, but broadband was rare, and neither YouTube nor Facebook nor Twitter yet existed. The iPhone, the first popular smartphone, would not be released until 2007. The Dean campaign would break President Bill Clinton’s fund-raising records and build a nationwide organization of 650,000 people, more than had joined any previous presidential campaign; but it would take one more presidential campaign cycle for the rocket engines of social networks to benefit from the fuel of broadband and provide sufficient thrust for the new model to reach escape velocity.
By 2007, Americans had begun participating in politics in numbers no one had imagined possible. TV ads would have almost nothing to do with Barack Obama’s election, although more would be spent on them than ever before. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination for the simple reason that she ran an old-fashioned campaign. But Obama’s victory in 2008 was remarkable not only because he raised a half-billion dollars online and had over 13 million people sign on to his campaign. His win in 2008 was most remarkable because it allowed his campaign staff to do something truly novel in 2012: build a national campaign armed with big data.’
President Obama’s tribute to Led Zeppelin (by PBO2012)
Bruce Springsteen at Charlottesville Obama For America Rally (by BruceSpringsteen)
Obama To GOP On Susan Rice: “If They Want To Go After Somebody, They Should Go After Me” (by Adalrich William)
Where Did the Debt Come From? (by seeprogress)
Weekly Address: Extending Middle Class Tax Cuts to Grow the Economy (by whitehouse)
President Obama: “I’m Really Proud of All of You.” (by BarackObamadotcom)
Paul McCartney And The Band Send A Message Of Support For The US Elections (by PAULMCCARTNEY)
The Republican strategy is perfectly clear and not even very well hidden. Yet many of us don’t accept it as a reality because it does not feel true. We instinctively hold the president, not Congress, responsible, another finding political scientists have measured. The hunger to attribute all outcomes to the president is so deep that the political elite take it on faith. Bob Woodward, who is justly famed as a reporter but whose opinions are interesting only as a barometer of Washington establishmentarianism, blamed Obama because Republicans turned down an extraordinarily favorable budget deal. “Presidents work their will — or should work their will,” Woodward declared, “on the important matters of national business.”
How can a president “work his will” in such a way as to force autonomous members of the opposite party controlling a co-equal branch of government to sacrifice their own calculated self-interest? It is a form of magical thinking, but a pervasive one. Which is exactly why the Republican strategy — making Obama’s promise to transcend partisanship fail by withholding cooperation — has worked.
Whether this strategy succeeds in its ultimate goal — returning the GOP to power in 2013 — depends on the election. In an unusual way, the success of Obama’s first term hangs in large part on his reelection bid, as a President Romney would probably kill his grandest achievement of providing health insurance to those Americans too sick or poor to acquire it in the marketplace. So any evaluation of Obama’s term before the election must be provisional.
What can be said without equivocation is that Obama has proven himself morally, intellectually, temperamentally, and strategically. In my lifetime, or my parents’, he is easily the best president. On his own terms, and not merely as a contrast to an unacceptable alternative, he overwhelmingly deserves reelection.
How can a president “work his will” in such a way as to force autonomous members of the opposite party controlling a co-equal branch of government to sacrifice their own calculated self-interest? It is a form of magical thinking, but a pervasive one. Which is exactly why the Republican strategy — making Obama’s promise to transcend partisanship fail by withholding cooperation — has worked.
Whether this strategy succeeds in its ultimate goal — returning the GOP to power in 2013 — depends on the election. In an unusual way, the success of Obama’s first term hangs in large part on his reelection bid, as a President Romney would probably kill his grandest achievement of providing health insurance to those Americans too sick or poor to acquire it in the marketplace. So any evaluation of Obama’s term before the election must be provisional.
What can be said without equivocation is that Obama has proven himself morally, intellectually, temperamentally, and strategically. In my lifetime, or my parents’, he is easily the best president. On his own terms, and not merely as a contrast to an unacceptable alternative, he overwhelmingly deserves reelection.
“
| — | Jonathan Chait, Barack Obama Is a Great President. Yes, Great. — Daily Intel |
