Believing in Barack

By GAIL COLLINS
NYT

I have faith in Barack Obama. Of course, I also have faith in the New York Mets.

I believe Obama is going to get his groove back and be the leader we elected, even though he is testing us sorely. This week he went to South Korea to negotiate a trade agreement, and the agreement fell through. The administration says this is because he was being a tough bargainer, but you don’t send the president overseas to fail to get an agreement. Wasn’t anybody taking notes when he went to Denmark to fail to get the Olympics for Chicago?

Also, the president has been looking very wishy-washy on the Bush tax cuts. We all know that he wants to extend the tax cuts for the middle class and end them for the wealthy. But that will require a huge battle with the Republicans in Congress, and the statements coming out of the White House have not exactly sounded as if everybody’s going to the mattresses. “We need to deal with the world as we find it,” David Axelrod, an adviser to Obama, told The Huffington Post.

The theory is that the president should sound reasonable so that if the Republicans dig in their heels, they will look like the bad guys. But refusing to give an expensive break to millionaires at a time of high deficits should be a crusade. Take it to the people — let’s enjoy politics for a change! Then, if Congress sends the president a bill extending the tax breaks for everybody, the nation will be on his side when he vetoes it.

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