The alternate reality Village
by David Atkins
While the Administration restricts access to birth control and looks to give away gifts to the GOP in exchange for allowing Dems to pass a tax cut, here's what passes for commentary in the Village:
Obama’s Aloof Behavior With GOP Could Hurt Agenda
President Barack Obama's relationships with Congressional Republicans have withered in recent months, casting doubt on his ability to influence Congress during the election season next year as well as his ability to push an aggressive agenda if he wins a second term.
Though Republicans are in a good position to hold the levers of power in both chambers come 2013, several rank-and-file GOP Senators told Roll Call last week that Obama hasn't called them at all this year — and several said his standoffish relations have hurt his agenda in a chamber that is pivotal to any White House legislative successes.
Obama did have all Senate Republicans up to the White House for a cattle call earlier this year, and he engaged in extensive discussions with Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on this summer's debt deal. But direct contacts between the president and lawmakers have slowed to a trickle as he gears up for re-election, Republicans said.
A senior Republican aide said Obama has had just three brief phone calls with Boehner since unveiling his jobs package — and there's been no real effort to work with the Speaker.
In the Village, the only thing wrong with Washington is that the Obama Administration hasn't made enough courtesy calls and dinner invitations to Republicans. If only he were a nicer guy all our problems would be solved, and Republicans would act like serious people and come to a 50-50 compromise with Democrats.
Fox News propaganda is easier to take, precisely because it's partisan propaganda and everyone knows it. But the Villagers actually believe this stuff. They live in a world of endless cocktail parties, where no one truly suffers, public policy is an abstraction that only affects the little people, and all their personal dramas boil down to rumors over who is sleeping with whom, and gripes about who didn't get invited to whose party. That's the world these people live in, so it's the world they overlay onto the political scene. It's the social milieu they know, and they've spent decades convincing the public that Washington works that way, too: that the only problem with the place is that we don't send nice, friendly people there who will all invite each other over for dinner and drinks to hash out compromise policies.
And in its own way, that's far more damaging than anything Fox News has ever done.
.