Timing Obama’s honeymoon
Who will be the first to spoil the post-election mood for the president-elect?
Barack Obama is in for a disappointment if he expects a long honeymoon, said Tony Blankley in The Washington Times. The media and politicians on both sides are supposed to share in the same mood, and the president-elect is whispering “sweet honeymoon words of passionate bipartisanship.” But I didn’t choose him, I don’t trust him, “and I don’t look forward to a long relationship with him.”
Obama is entitled to a honeymoon, said Stuart M. Butler in The New York Times online, but it will end quickly, especially concerning the sticky issue of health care, if he doesn’t play his cards right. “First, he has to make a strong commitment to bipartisanship.” Second, he has to show he’s not going to simply throw more money at the problem, but come up with ways to get better care for the money we’re already spending.
Republicans won’t be the first ones to ruin the mood, said Bonne Erbe in U.S. News & World Report online. Look for people feeling jilted on the left to “start sniping soon and fall apart within months”—not because of any lack of bipartisanship, but because they fault Obama for giving too much to the right and too little to the “hard-left.”
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