Collective Conscious

Looks like his patience with “the process” has finally run out, and not a moment too soon. You’d think it might have hap­pened in August, when it was clear there would be no Sen­ate health bill by the dead­line. Or per­haps in Decem­ber, when Sen­a­tors had to work for weeks straight to clear fil­i­busters and amend­ments to pass their bill on Christ­mas Eve. Or last month, when Sen. Shelby decided to bring the entire exec­u­tive nom­i­na­tion process to a grind­ing halt. No; Mr. Obama has been quite patient with his Demo­c­ra­tic houses, and I believe he’s made his sit­u­a­tion this year bet­ter by refus­ing to step on their toes. Now, how­ever, it appears Obama is ready to take a dif­fer­ent tack and actu­ally wield the exec­u­tive power he has.

Obama began by threat­en­ing to appoint nom­i­nees dur­ing the Senate’s recess, which would let them serve with­out Sen­ate approval until the begin­ning of the next Con­gress. Repub­li­cans folded and allowed votes on 27 nom­i­nees who passed easily.

The admin­is­tra­tion also recently announced its intent to move for­ward on domes­tic issues by use of bureau­cratic power at the agency level. With the rel­a­tive suc­cess of the EPA car­bon rul­ing (as com­pared to Congress’s envi­ron­men­tal bills), the pres­i­dent has decided that this coun­try can’t wait any longer for the changes in gov­ern­ment that we were promised. So he’s going to take care of it himself.

He’s even get­ting ready to force for­ward action on health care. The upcom­ing sum­mit should pres­sure both Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats in Con­gress to move for­ward, and more impor­tantly it sig­nals that Obama will nei­ther give up on this crit­i­cal effort nor stand aside while leg­is­la­tors scut­tle it.

I’m glad to see that the pres­i­dent is throw­ing his weight behind all the efforts in a pos­i­tive way. This is exactly the kind of lead­er­ship I hoped to get from Obama — it’s not tough, it’s not over­bear­ing, it’s not con­de­scend­ing, and it’s not over­reach­ing. It’s the nudges and the veiled threats that will force leg­is­la­tors to move in his direc­tion, but with­out the stron­garm tac­tics that could make ene­mies on the Hill and worry Democ­rats about hav­ing found a blue Bush. Getting things done the right way will make the coun­try a bet­ter place, and it will give the Democ­rats in Con­gress some­thing to bring home to their dis­tricts come November.