And it comes, unsurprisingly, from Andrew Sullivan:

To use the terms Obama first employed in his inaugural address: the president begins by extending a hand to his opponents; when they respond by raising a fist, he demonstrates that they are the source of the problem; then, finally, he moves to his preferred position of moderate liberalism and fights for it without being effectively tarred as an ideologue or a divider.

Every time I’ve been down on the Obama administration (during the ups and downs of the health care reform debate, after the 2010 midterms, during the summer of 2011), I’ve welcomed Sullivan’s calm evaluation of things. And I’ve come to accept his vision: that Obama has always taken the long view of things; that his ultimate strength is his ability to calmly allow the other side to self-destruct. And I believe they have, and they will. Nominating Romney, a .0001 percenter who says income inequality should only be talked about in “quiet rooms” and who blasts Obama for “apologizing for America,” will ultimately prove to be a huge mistake for the GOP at the hands of Obama’s calm and collected demeanor and consistent defense of his actual record.

My only hope is that the American people can come to see Obama in the same light as Sullivan has:

What I see in front of my nose is a president whose character, record, and promise remain as grotesquely underappreciated now as they were absurdly hyped in 2008. And I feel confident that sooner rather than later, the American people will come to see his first term from the same calm, sane perspective. And decide to finish what they started.”

After tonight’s Republican primary debate in New Hampshire, David Roberts tweeted:

“Obama went into general election in 2008 toughened by brutal warfare w/ Clinton. Romney’s going in w/ the world’s biggest glass jaw.”

This will likely give the President’s supporters a confidence boost, as I’m sure plenty of them (including myself) often forget just how great of a campaign he ran in 2008. The 50-state strategy, the online contributions, and all the rest…it was, to say the least, impressive.

But this brings up two questions: Can he repeat the magic? And will it match up to the spending behemoth that is the Romney campaign (he will be the nominee, I have no doubt)? In response to the former, all I can say is there are positive signs coming from the President’s camp in recent months, as it looks like Obama is gearing up for a populist run against Congress, which, last I checked, had an approval rating of 5%. I’d like to see that.

As for the second question, there are obviously a number of possibilities. One, Romney takes his extensive (primary) campaign experience and vast amounts of personal and super PAC wealth and rides it to victory. Or, two, Romney’s lack of experience outside of the primaries is a major disadvantage, and Obama’s well-oiled campaign machine hits Romney where he’s gotten a free ride thus far, thereby leading to Obama’s reelection.

Much of this depends on a variety of factors, of course. I’m interested in seeing how much the President defends his record in office in the face of Romney’s alternate universe view of the last three years, for one.

At a time when the ranks of the poor are growing fast and food prices are growing increasingly unmanageable for those on the bottom rungs, the House Agricultural Committee suggests we cut funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as the Food Stamp Program. Not only that, we should turn a blind eye to farm subsidies, despite ample proof of just the sort of wasteful spending that Republicans claim to be trimming from the federal budget.

Who has more of a voice in Congress, the poor or the agricultural industry? This isn’t a tough one to figure out.

Cut food stamps (which overwhelmingly serve families with children), cut school food programs, and cut education budgets across the board, and what are we leaving for future generations? Certainly not much hope. But Big Ag can look confidently into the future, as I’m sure their lobbyists will have staying power for some time to come.

Eurie Stamps, grandfather of 12 (Photo courtesy of BostonHerald.com)

Radley Balko once again relays a sad and unnecessary death at the hands of a SWAT team member during a militarized drug raid. This time, an innocent 68-year old grandfather of 12 was shot and killed after a SWAT team cop tripped and accidentally discharged his rifle. Balko:

The argument here is not to start putting police in prison for making honest mistakes under incredibly difficult circumstances. The argument is to stop creating those circumstances when it isn’t absolutely necessary. Short of that, we’re once again left with this: An innocent, unarmed man was shot dead by a cop. But the cop isn’t responsible. The victim isn’t responsible. And the policies that created the situation aren’t responsible. Which means that in a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months, I’m going to be writing all of this again.

Well, they did it. Earlier tonight, Wisconsin Republicans used a parliamentary procedure to pass the most contentious aspect of Gov. Walker’s budget proposal, and once he signs the bill into law, (most of) Wisconsin’s public unions will no longer have most of their collective bargaining rights. Ezra Klein has a nice post explaining just how they managed to do it, as well as some predictions for the days and weeks ahead:

What happens next? Expect the protests over the next few days to be ferocious. But unless a judge rules the move illegal — and I don’t know how to judge the likelihood of that — Walker’s proposed law will go forward. The question is whether Walker and the Republicans who voted for it will do the same.

Will Wisconsin’s Republicans pay at the voting booths in the next elections? It’s hard to say, but there does seem to be fairly significant polling results showing a distaste for both Gov. Walker’s policies and his tactics on this issue, so it’s fair to speculate. Perhaps more importantly, we’ll see if other states follow his example.

As a teacher-to-be, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the national obsession with the former DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee and the anti-union sentiment that accompanied her rise. Teacher unions have their downsides, sure, but on the whole, they provide a service to the nation’s public schools, as opposed to the prevailing narrative that they simply protect terrible teachers and keep great teachers from rescuing our nation’s children.

Rhee’s rise to fame wouldn’t have been so surprising if she weren’t left-leaning and adored by big name liberals across the country. How could a party so long supported by unions be leading the national effort to delegitimize and destroy one of the most influential unions?

Richard Kahlenberg has an excellent piece over at Slate in the form of a review of Richard Whitmire’s The Bee Eater, a mostly glowing biography of sorts of Rhee. Key quote:

Rhee’s message about education reform is very seductive because it’s simple and optimistic. Childhood poverty and economic school segregation, in Rhee’s world, are just “excuses” for teacher failure. If we could just get the unions to agree to stop protecting bad teachers and allow great teachers to be paid more, she says, we could make all the difference in education. The narrative is attractive because it indeed would be wonderful if poverty and segregation didn’t matter, and if heroic teachers could consistently overcome the odds for students whom everyone agrees deserve a better shot in life.

One of the main problems with Rhee’s version of educational reform is its simplistic focus on and blaming of teachers. Just get rid of the bad teachers and pay good teachers more, problem solved, they say. This discounts the complex interplay of poverty, segregation, budget cuts, and a plethora of other factors that lead to the achievement gap in our public schools. Yes, there are bad teachers out there, and yes, there should be mechanisms to fire them. But destroying teacher unions is not the answer to all our nation’s education problems. Kahlenberg:

Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee’s simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy, and that her dramatic, often authoritarian, style is ill-suited for education.

Kahlenberg goes on to discuss various alternatives to Rhee’s approach of mass firings, as well as some of the positive steps she took in DC. He doesn’t profess to have all of the answers, and neither do I, but I know that Rhee is not the solution to our problems.

Could Pres. Obama be using the same strategy for deficit and debt reduction? I more or less blasted him for his budget proposal, which is full of cuts to popular progressive programs and completely lacking in entitlement and defense spending reform. And people from both sides of the aisle have gone on the attack, chastising the president for this or that, and proposing their own budgets.

If Pres. Obama’s goal is a serious discussion of debt reduction, maybe his budget proposal is actually exactly what was needed to get the ball rolling, as opposed to the distraction that I initially pegged it as. Andrew Sprung certainly believes so:

I’ve been tracking the evidence that Obama is acting on the theory — advanced by sitting elected officials and political scientists alike — that for major bipartisan policy deals, leading with a grand presidential plan is counterproductive.

He then compiles a number of quotes illustrating that, instead of introducing a budget proposal with serious debt reduction efforts and having it rejected immediately by members of both parties, Pres. Obama saw that coming and more or less conned Congress into addressing debt reduction as if it were their own idea. Need some proof? Just look at the Republicans’ own statement:

“Our budget will lead where the President has failed, and it will include real entitlement reforms so that we can have a conversation with the American people about the challenges we face and the need to chart a new path to prosperity,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a joint statement with the rest of the GOP leadership team and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Pres. Obama, you sly dog, you.

President Obama’s budget for 2012 was released earlier today, and like many others in the blogosphere, I’m unimpressed and frankly a little offended and disappointed. How could the man who created the Simpson-Bowles Commission propose a budget that flies in the face of everything that commission stood for?

Maybe it’s not so hard to imagine that the President would leave defense and entitlement spending untouched. After all, who would be so courageous? I’ve learned enough by this point to know that Pres. Obama will not stand up for the long-term causes that truly matter, that might make him hated in the present but revered in the long term.

But why did he have to, yet again, stick a finger in the eye of his more liberal supporters? Minor cuts to the Pell Grant program? A big thank you to his young, college-age backers who so ardently voiced their support for Hope and Change.

Larger (and more painful) cuts to energy assistance for the poor, and other adjustments that will directly affect working- and middle-class families? How could that possibly be a good move, even if, as some are saying, this budget is a purely political move? Why alienate such a broad spectrum of supporters?

The list goes on, but the point is that this is not the budget Pres. Obama needed to release. At a time when he has little to no sway over Congress, why introduce a budget that has little chance of getting passed, but a very high chance of causing popular backlash? You will not win over the House Republicans with these cuts, Mr. President. You will only create resentment in your own ranks, and for what? I see very little political upside to this budget plan.

I can only hope that these cuts do not get approved, because they are a painful yet insignificant part of the government’s overall spending. If Pres. Obama was truly serious about cutting the deficit and the debt, he would be well-inclined to read over Ezra Klein’s description of the situation:

If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army.

We need large, targeted and careful cuts to the bloated defense budget, and serious entitlement reform. It can be done, and Pres. Obama has the rhetorical power to get it started, but instead he’s playing games.

EDIT: Turns out Pres. Obama inserted language into the budget calling for Congress to begin talking about Social Security reform.

The President believes that we should come together now, in bipartisan fashion, to strengthen Social Security for the future. He calls on the Congress to follow the example of great party leaders in the past — such as Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. and President Ronald Reagan — and work in a bipartisan fashion to strengthen Social Security for years to come.

If he continues to push for these talks, that will be a positive sign that he’s at least somewhat serious.

“There is no question that the first, second and third drivers of this Egyptian revolution were the Egyptian people…The Obama administration also deserves a great deal of credit, which it probably won’t receive.  It understood immediately and intuitively that it should not attempt to lead a protest movement which had mobilized itself without American guidance, and consistently deferred to the Egyptian people.”

Whether the American public will view Obama in such a favorable light is yet to be seen, but he’s got my support on this one. Yet another example of his slow, plodding, yet ultimately successful presidential strategy.