Jonathan Chait really, really, really wants liberals to not notice that President Obama is no George W Bush. How much does he want it? He wants it badly enough to jettison the entire idea of the Imperial Presidency (don’t worry: Chait and the rest will start grousing about it again on, say, January 20, 2013). Nope, it’s not Barry Obama’s fault that he couldn’t spin insanely lopsided Congressional majority straw into policy gold, because of… separation of powers:
The most common hallmark of the left’s magical thinking is a failure to recognize that Congress is a separate, coequal branch of government consisting of members whose goals may differ from the president’s. Congressional Republicans pursued a strategy of denying Obama support for any major element of his agenda, on the correct assumption that this would make it less popular and help the party win the 2010 elections. Only for roughly four months during Obama’s term did Democrats have the 60 Senate votes they needed to overcome a filibuster.
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That kind of analysis, however, just feels wrong to liberals, who remember Bush steamrolling his agenda through Congress with no such complaints about obstructionism. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recently invoked “the panoply of domestic legislation — including Bush tax cuts, No Child Left Behind and the Medicare Part D prescription drug entitlement — that Bush pushed through Congress in his first term.”
First term.
Hee.
Let’s talk about Bush’s second term, instead. Actually, let’s talk about the second half of Bush’s second term. Continue reading Jon Chait and understanding Obama.