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February 13, 2012
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Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
February 7, 2012
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Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
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Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
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Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
March 12, 2010
/ 26 Adar 5770
Why Obama needs a Republican congress
By
Rich Lowry
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The undertakers of Bill Clinton's political doom showed up in Little Rock, Ark., in 1992 for a meeting with the president-elect two months before his inauguration. They were the leaders of the Democratic Congress, and they might as well have been draped in black crepe.
"You can trust us," House Speaker Tom Foley told Clinton, in an assurance as false as it was sincere. "We all want to make this administration succeed."
Two years later, Clinton stood among smoldering political ruins. Democrats had lost both houses of Congress. A Republican upstart defeated Tom Foley. In trusting the Democratic leadership in Congress, Clinton nearly destroyed his presidency.
He learned a bitter lesson in the perils of trying to govern a center-right country in league with a left-wing Congress. It's not an accident that the most sustained period of political success for any of the last three Democratic presidents, outside of their initial honeymoons, came after Clinton lost Congress. Only then was he forced to govern from the center.
If President Barack Obama is ever going to regain the ground he's lost as a bipartisan healer determined to transcend ideological divisions, he'll need Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Majority Leader Harry Reid or both shunted back to the minority. For Obama, a Republican Congress could be a counterintuitive political boon.
Recent history suggests that there are two broad options for a Democratic president yoked to a Democratic Congress. He can, like Clinton and Obama, get along with Congress and ineluctably get pulled to the left of the electorate. Or, he can, like Jimmy Carter, keep his distance and his relative moderation, and suffer an acrimonious relationship that brands him as ineffectual.
In theory, it should be possible to escape this double bind. But Democrats with control of both the executive and legislative branches have an irresistible FDR complex. They consider it their duty to establish vast new programmatic edifices, or die in the trying. Truer to his moderate-sounding election campaign than Clinton or Obama, Carter resisted this urge and got a primary challenge from Ted Kennedy.

Outside of any ideological predilections, Congress is a drag. Congressional leaders generally don't make appealing national figures. They rule over an unwieldy (and often unseemly) institution and rise to prominence based on their appeal to their fellow members, not their stage presence or post-partisan personas. At the health-care summit a few weeks ago, Pelosi and Reid characteristically jangled as Obama soothed. He'd have been better off without them not for the first time.
On health care, the hog is on the wire, as they say in the Midwest. Either way it goes, win or lose, it will hurt. Obama got in this situation partly out of excessive deference to the Democratic majority. It considered any serious compromise with Republicans anathema, and even now a faction persists in pushing for the out-of-reach public option. Since the bill was too ambitious to garner comfortable margins for passage, gross and self-serving special deals became indispensible to its progress. Obama has been saddled with the fallout, although he's obviously been a willing victim.
He forcefully pushed for a stimulus bill loaded with years' worth of pent-up liberal spending priorities, a cap-and-trade bill greased with corporate giveaways, and the health-care bill that features a new partisan outrage every other day. All of this positions Obama further to the left, and deeper into politics-as-usual, than before he signed up with Pelosi and Reid.
A Republican Congress would give him a handy foil and force him, right in time for his re-election campaign, into strategic bipartisanship. The Republican takeover in 1994 seemed the end for Bill Clinton. Long after Tom Foley had been forgotten, though, Clinton signed major bipartisan welfare-reform and deficit-reduction bills, while making incremental steps on health care that were popular and sustainable.
Obama probably doesn't consider a Republican Congress in his interest. But with all he's done to bring one about, who knows?
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© 2009 King Features Syndicate
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