HANGIN' TOUGH!

"Don't just talk about. BE ABOUT IT!"

Words.

"Our political system is not accustomed to the kind of battle going on now. President Obama has been slow to adjust to it. The voters are understandably mystified and frustrated by it. In the meantime, the economy sits on the edge of stagnation and something worse.

 ...Now we face a fundamental divide over the most basic questions: Is government good or bad? Can public action make the private economy work better, or are all efforts to alter the market’s course — by Congress, the president, the Federal Reserve — doomed to failure?

When politicians and their supporters believe the other side is pursuing policies that would destroy all they cherish, compromise becomes not a desirable expedient but “almost treasonous,” to use the phrase tossed about by Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Under these circumstances, taking enormous risks with the country’s well-being, as House Republicans did in the debt-ceiling rumble, is no longer out of bounds. It’s a form of patriotism. When your adversaries’ ideas are so dastardly, it’s better to court chaos, win the fight and pick up the pieces later.

And to make matters worse — and more confusing — the two sides are not equally distant from the political center. We are in an age of asymmetric polarization.

...The president seems to have awoken to the danger he faces. In his speech to Congress, he pointedly addressed those who believe “that the only thing we can do to restore prosperity is just dismantle government, refund everybody’s money, and let everyone write their own rules, and tell everyone they’re on their own.” He added: “That’s not who we are. That’s not the story of America.”

But that is precisely who most of the Republican Party now thinks we are.

The president has offered eloquent defenses of the role of government in the past, only to revert to bipartisan fantasies that, in the end, always make him look weaker. The central question — for his jobs plan and his future — is whether this time he sticks with an analysis of the nature of our political fight that sees it as it is, not as he wishes it were."

THE WASHINGTON POST: How much has Obama learned?