The recent press conference where President Obama tried to sell tax cuts for those making over $250k while extending unemployment benefits for 13 months struck me as being odd but until I read Peggy Noonan's article titled From Audacity to Animosity, I couldn't understand what was so perplexing.
This portion of the article is most important:
This portion of the article is most important:
Continue Reading...President Obama was supposed to be announcing an important compromise, as he put it, on tax policy. Normally a president, having agreed with the opposition on something big, would go through certain expected motions. He would laud the specific virtues of the plan, show graciousness toward the negotiators on the other side—graciousness implies that you won—and refer respectfully to potential critics as people who'll surely come around once they are fully exposed to the deep merits of the plan.
Instead Mr. Obama said, essentially, that he hates the deal he just agreed to, hates the people he made the deal with, and hates even more the people who'll criticize it.