It's Not About Policy Anymore, and Never Really Was

Along the same lines of a post I wrote yesterday, I'm surprised to see some progressive bloggers missing the point of the president finally playing some politics.

Yglesias writing about his displeasure with President Obama blaming too much a focus on policy:

This is not the first time I’ve seen the president quoted as expressing those views, and I’ve heard similar things myself from his lips. The invocations of Carter and Clinton, if anything, seem to me to illustrate what’s wrong with it. Clinton succeeded precisely because he was a policy wonk.

I have to disagree.  Bill Clinton succeeded precisely because he was a master politician.  Not to cut him down on his policy skills because he surely had that too.  But his political ability is unmatched by anyone alive today.  Clinton played politics.  He played it the old way. He won.  He wasn't afraid to benefit from his opponents being wrong. And he certainly wasn't afraid to kick them while they were down.

One of the best lines I ever heard from President Clinton was in 2004 when he was asked he how handled all of the attacks against him. He answered, when they hit me, I hit back.

That's how it works.  That's politics the old way.  It's probably politics the only way.  If you expect it any other way, you're sorely mistaken.  Hope for it to get better, maybe even try a couple things to help change it.  But if you want to win elections, you don't get points for making your opponents look like willing equals.  You win elections by making your opponents look like willing executioners. Bill Clinton, for all his policy wonkishness, was a master politician long before he ever cared about policy.  Not to mention, you don't get to write policy unless you win.  And you don't win by picking your opponent up off the ground.

If you think for one minute if Republicans win the White House next year that they will give one ounce of consideration to Democratic ideas, you're an idiot.  I mean that in every sense of the word too. The last thing they will do is focus on bipartisan policy.  You either play the game or go home.  Ain't nobody gonna change it, I absolutely guarantee that.

*Update:

Well, well, well...I see Whiskey Fire actually has a set of balls.

The reason Obama is in trouble is because too many people don't have jobs, and one of the reasons too many people don't have jobs is that the asshole commentariat thinks "unity of purpose" is more important than "jobs."

What is batshit here is that Keller is utterly oblivious to his own role in this nonsensical disaster. Obama is a creature of the Sensible Consensus. He is the Bill Keller President.

You'd be surprised how much unity is created when people have money in their pockets. You think Clinton unified any sort of purpose? Heck no. But unemployment was 4.6% and that's all anyone cared about. Go unify your tree hugging doggy day-camp friends and leave the rest of us alone.