The Warlocks Of Centrism Versus That Muggle-Loving Obama

What a magical world the centrist, “serious” journalists inhabit. Unlike our Muggle world, where people don’t have the ability to cast spells to get the outcomes they prefer, our serious journalists – like National Journal’s Ron Fournier – live in a magical wonderland where only a few words need to be said to get things going.

Fournier has been filing reports from his magical world, berating President Obama for acting like a Muggle and getting convenient links from Matt Drudge and company. He wonders why oh why President Obama doesn’t just solve the problem of Republican stubbornness.

Like most independent voters, I just want it fixed. I want my leaders to lead.

Of course, here in the Muggle world, most of us understand that despite his considerable political skills, President Obama is a mortal and doesn’t have access to Dumbledore, the Ministry of Magic, or a magical spell of “obstructum removo” to dissipate Republican obstruction to his presidency.

There’s no way Obama can cast a spell to get Republicans to accept a deal that includes numerous concessions to them. There’s no magical way Obama could get the Republican party to accept stimulus that included many of their tax cut ideas, or health care reform based on work done at one of the top conservative think tanks. Obama simply doesn’t have a spell in a book somewhere that will magically force the Republican party to stop obstructing his judicial nominees or from filibustering the nomination for his Secretary of Defense.

There’s no magic. There’s no special wand hidden in a compartment of the Resolute desk handed down from president to president.

Fournier (and David Brooks) exist in a world where you just type the word “compromise” into a column seven hundred times and expect it to work in the real world.

It doesn’t matter to them if the resulting legislation ends up tilting towards the conservative position in a country where 65 million voted against the conservative agenda, they just want “compromise” so that they can feel warm and fuzzy about some vague, centrist position. They are well-paid scribes, they don’t have to care about the social safety net being cut, as the right lusts for.

The plight of the poor and middle class don’t matter to them as long as they can write “centrist” and “sensible” in their columns.

And they are very upset at President Obama for actually holding on to principles that people elected him to uphold. In their minds, Obama has lowered himself by being a political leader with core values. Why can’t he be like them and throw out his icky partisan beliefs and support in order to be “sensible” and wise like them?

He just has to wave his magical wand, and despite their long history of opposing things that they used to champion when it comes out of the mouth of a Democratic president, this will somehow get the Republicans to stop being obstructionists.

We stupid Muggles, can’t we understand these warlocks of centrism?