Mark Halperin is terribly, amazingly – awe-inspiringly – wrong:
Here’s the relevant text:
“This is a really bad sign for Barack Obama to try to change Washington…. He needs bipartisan solutions. They went for it and they came up with zero…. [This] does not bode well for a future that is supposed to be post-partisan. [...]
“[Obama] could have gone for centrist compromises. You can say to your own party, ‘Sorry, some of you liberals aren’t going to like it, but I am going to change this legislation radically to get a big centrist majority rather than an all-Democratic vote.’ He chose not to do that, that’s the exact path that George Bush took for most of his presidency with disastrous consequences for bipartisanship and solving big problems.”
I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure as to how Halperin is defining bipartisanship. I mean, from where I sit, Obama took a thoroughly bipartisan approach: he took the unprecedented step of visiting opposition lawmakers on Capital Hill, he directed congressional Democrats to preemptively remove objectionable parts from the package, I mean, he even took the advice of Republican leadership and included more tax cuts in the package. By any reasonable standard, the Democrats passed a bill thoroughly bipartisan in tone and content.
But, for reasons I still don’t understand, Halperin believes that bipartisanship (for Democrats at least) means attracting Republican votes above all else. Nothing else matters. Steve Benen says it best:
Halperin believes, for reasons that are unclear, that the paramount goal was to win the support of lawmakers who were wrong and who were advocating bad ideas. It’s not about what works, or what would actually improve the economy in the midst of a serious recession. What really matters is “bipartisan solutions.” Why? Because Mark Halperin says so. Merit be damned — if Democrats liked the legislation and Republicans didn’t, it’s necessarily flawed.
Again, and I can’t stress this enough: Mark Halperin is stunningly incompetent.
God Mark Halperin is a douche bag — an uber douche bag. The fact that he is treated as a serious journalist and a man to be reckoned with in this city is deeply sad.
On the other hand, to be honest, it gives me a bit of hope. If a no-talent ass clown like Mark Halperin can find success, then surely I – a markedly more competent college student – can!