I spent my Saturday morning watching a replay of yesterday’s question-and-answer session between Obama and House Republicans. It’s rare in American politics to see this kind of unmediated policy debate between a president and the opposition. And that’s unfortunate; I think a lot of voters are hungry for honest debate free of media spin and hyperbole.
My more partisan take on the Q&A is that it plays so well to Obama’s strengths while exposing Republican “ideas” as vacuous and simplistic. The president had the assured demeanor of someone eager to debate because his ideas are qualitatively better than those of the opposition. I got a lot of satisfaction from watching him dismantle Republican nonsense that the health care bill is the instrument of radical Trotskyites plotting a proletariat revolution. If Obama is to have any hope of moving his agenda forward, he’ll need to do a lot more forceful advocacy like this. Americans generally still like Obama, much more so than anyone in Congress. He needs to parlay that likeability into trust and these open debates are a good start.
