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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 1/14/16

Obama's Last State of the Union and the Myth of Bipartisanship

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Thom Hartmann
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Reprinted from Smirking Chimp

Obama  Last State of the Union Address
Obama Last State of the Union Address
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After seven years in the White House, President Obama still hasn't learned his lesson about Republicans. Case in point: his conclusion to last night's State of the Union address.

Looking back on his time as commander-in-chief, the president regretted that he had not done more to change our country's broken political system. Someone with the political "gifts" of Lincoln or FDR might have been able to do so, he said, but not him.

The idea here is that Lincoln and FDR were great presidents because they brought people together and forced them to make compromises. In other words, President Obama thinks that Lincoln and FDR were great presidents because they were "bipartisan."

This is just flat-out wrong.

What made Lincoln and FDR great wasn't the fact that they made compromises with their enemies; what made them great was the fact that they fought their enemies and supported policies that were right, even if they made people on the other side of the aisle really, really angry.

This probably sounds a little bizarre to some people.

Bipartisanship, or at least the myth of bipartisanship, is so ingrained in our culture that many Americans forget what it really took for great presidents to become great. This is especially true in the case of President Lincoln.

Although his leanings were always towards compromise, the things we most remember him for -- fighting the Civil War, signing the Emancipation Proclamation and passing the 13th Amendment -- happened when he stopped being a moderate and embraced the radicals in his party who wanted him to become more -- not less -- partisan.

FDR, similarly, was the opposite of bipartisan. He was the ultimate fighter and he kicked Republicans in the butt and took their lunch money, too.

Listening to his speeches now is actually pretty shocking. Not only did he call Republicans out for being shills for the super-rich and the robber barons, but he also called them the enemies of the people and the enemies of democracy.

Tragically, although it's still very much true, President Barack Obama would never talk like that.

A great example of Roosevelt at the top of his game is the speech he gave on Halloween night, 1936, just three days before being elected to his second term as president. In that speech, he promised to keep on fighting his Republican enemies and the corporate elites they represented, telling his New York City audience that he "welcomed their hatred." Talking like that is the reason FDR was elected president four times, and it's the reason why he was arguably the greatest president in US history.

Being a great president doesn't mean making compromises with the enemies of democracy, who have always existed in this country and this point in time just happen to control the Republican Party. Being a great president means fighting the enemies of democracy head-on, as Lincoln did when he was at his best, and as FDR did the entire time he was in the White House.

The fact that President Obama doesn't understand this is his greatest flaw, especially because today's Republicans are as determined to undermine democracy as any faction in American history. And that's no exaggeration: conservatives literally planned to sabotage the Obama presidency the very first day it began.

On January 20, 2009, a night when the Obamas were dancing at inaugural balls, a group of Republicans were planning the end of the Obama presidency before it even got seriously going. At the Caucus Room restaurant in Washington, DC, they drew up a plan to intentionally sabotage Obama at every point possible.

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Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning New York Times best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk program on the Air America Radio Network, live noon-3 PM ET. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights," "We The People," "What Would Jefferson Do?," "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle (more...)
 

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