While I can certainly respect the President’s desire for bipartisanship, the tactics of the right make it clear that it isn’t possible in today’s political climate. I truly understand the desire to tout any legislation as inclusive, but politics is a dirty game.

President Obama still has the mindset of a commUNITY organizer. He still wants his “kumbaya” moment. Although this is honorable, it isn’t practical in politics. I would imagine that he decided to run for office after surmising that the powers that be had their own selfish agendas that didn’t include their constituencies — the ones they IDEALLY work for. I’m sure that he felt he could get more done from the inside. NOW he has to understand that this new circle he is in is STILL proliferated with the selfsame people who did little for the Chicago folks that he represented as a commUNITY organizer.

Even worse, his catering to the other side — most outrageously, his support of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter — has alienated Congressmen on the left. This whole desire for compromise when it wasn’t necessary has led to a very tenuous ability to pass a bill that includes a much-needed public option. I fear that, as a result, the American people are going to end up with a mere face lift, a facade of a reform — reform in name only. President Obama needs to be more forceful — become, in the words of President-Select George W. Bush, “the decider“. He needs to tell Congress that he will sign absolutely NO BILL, outside of a budgetary one, until and unless he gets the public option health-care reform bill the American people deserve. Am I wrong to feel this way?