What makes me weep the most these days is The West Wing.  Yeah, I'm a decade late, but when I was traveling a lot for my previous bourgeois career I just couldn't ever get invested in any TV show.  Finally, however, the fam has brought me into the alternate universe of President Martin Sheen.  Which makes me extremely happy because it really rocks, yet I am sad in the way only good fiction that shows us how life could be have the power to do–perhaps instead of burning books ala Fahrenheit 451, we should burn DVDs (and I don't mean for copying).

The other day we watched Let Bartlett Be Bartlett:

The staff begin to realize that the Bartlet administration has been ineffective because it has been too timid to make bold decisions, focusing instead on the exigencies of politics. Finally, Leo confronts President Bartlet with his own timidity, challenging him to be himself and to take the staff “off the leash.” – in other words, he seeks to “Let Bartlet be Bartlet”. The President and his staff resolve to act boldly and “raise the level of public debate” in America.

That first sentence sounds familiar.  I keep waiting for the rest of the description to happen.

Anyhoo, a Congressman says this to Sam, one of the WH communications dudes played by Rob Lowe, during a meeting about DADT:

It’s federal law, and it takes an act of Congress to change it. If the President were serious about changing it, he’d be serious about changing it. He would not send you in here with me. He would not send you in here with two relatively junior D.O.D. staffers. He’d call his staff together, he’d say, “I want a resolution in the House. I want 50 high-profile co-sponsors. I want a deal, and I want it now.” Has the President done that?

The Executive is not a monarch and cannot do everything, or much of anything really without Congress.  But you know, there is that bully pulpit and as LBJ amongst others demonstrated, the ability to stake out the high ground and twist the necessary arms to get important shit done.

As Digby said about the current deficit nonsense:

The point here is not to endlessly criticize the President, nor is it to ignore the very real constraints placed on him by the right wing propaganda infrastructure and the Republican House, as well as his need to look forward to re-election in 2012 with independent voters who are wary of “government spending” and desirous of “compromise.” 

…

But let's say the defenders of the Administration are right on the political realities of the situation. That doesn't mean the President had to embrace austerity with open arms. He could just as easily have laid out his jobs program and his desire to put America to work, while warning about the effects austerity would have. He could have called out House Republicans for taking the country hostage, and made clear that he was signing austerity measures under duress. He could have demanded real concessions in exchange for the austerity measures put in place. 

There's a vast difference between pragmatic recognition of systemic constraints imposed by unified opposition and an overzealous ceding of the debate and moral territory to stave off potential defeat.  Even an apparent tactical loss can be transformed through political jujitsu into real strategic victory, but only if you make the effort to contest the issue in the first place:

Until November, 2012, every month that expires in the absence of President Obama's energetic slamming of demonstrably do-nothing Republicans will be a month unexploited, to the GOP's benefit.

Sadly, that doesn't appear to be up Obama's alley–he seems to prefer negotiating away his strength pre-emptively, which is precisely what his staff should not let him do because he still gets mired in the fight he hoped to avoid.  Sometimes you just gotta run into walls at full speed.  So my suggestion to the President in our timeline: hire Aaron Sorkin.

ntodd