It's funny--President Obama talks an awful lot about "bipartisanship" and working with Republicans--and yet many of those who are on Obama's side want nothing to do with it. Take for example the Washington Post's liberal columnist Eugene Robinson:
"Bipartisanship is safe and effective, when used as directed. In the present circumstance, however -- dire economic crisis, hardheaded Republicans, time running out -- bipartisanship is doing more harm than good. President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress can no longer afford to let comity defeat common sense. Another 600,000 Americans lost their jobs last month. If the loyal opposition chooses to obstruct economic recovery, those who hold power are obliged to use it."
But look, Mr. Robinson, the whole point of Republicans and conservatives is this: we don't think this "stimulus" bill is gonna LEAD to "economic recovery." Certainly the pork in it won't aid in economic recovery, and there are a whole bunch of economists, led now by Martin Feldstein, who agree. Assuming that all those who oppose this bill are therefore against "economic recovery" is not just blind partisanship, it's also not very honest.
UPDATE: and, by the way, even sympathetic journalists were not impressed by last night's Obama press conference in which he tried to defend his "stimulus" bill:
"Through most of his inaugural primetime press conference, Barack Obama seemed like he was channeling a particularly loquacious combination of Joe Biden, Bill Clinton, and the ghost of Hubert Humphrey. The president's response to the first question from the Associated Press about the risks of sounding too apocalyptic about the economy ran (or, to be more accurate, crawled) for nearly 1,200 words--and ended with Obama saying "Okay" with an implicit question mark as if he were requesting permission to keep on talking. A national poll from the Pew Research Center released Monday afternoon found that 92 percent of Americans described Obama as a "good communicator." There is a suspicion that those astronomic numbers had dipped by the time that Obama exited from the East Room of the White House at 9 p.m. on the dot."
