"When We Took Over the Government"

I remember sitting in a meeting back in the mid-1990s and listening to a federal bureaucrat named Elaine Kamarck, a Clinton appointee, talked about all of the changes that the administration had made since 1993. To make the point about how life was different under the Clintons as opposed to 12 years of Republican administration, she juxtaposed then and now, using the phrase "when we took over the government." I had visions of Daniel Ortega pistoleros vaulting the White House fence off of Pennsylvania Ave. Hillary sitting in the Oval Office, wearing camo, boots up on the desk, drawing on a Cuban cigar.

I had my second when-we-took-over-the-government moment this week reading about the Obama counterattack on the furor building over his surreptitious plan to nationalize healthcare:

• The lame plot by an amateur White House to have Americans rat out their fellow citizens who disagree with the President's plan for government-controlled medicine

•  The spam attack from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. containing the approved talking points on healthcare reform. (And where, oh where, did they get all those email addresses? Check the video below)

• And now the real counterattack: sending union sluggers into the town hall meetings across American this weekend to intimidate Americans exercising their right of free speech
  

The town hall meetings are American democracy at its best. The tide has turned on Pres. Obama, although he doesn't know it yet. He is an academic liberal, a policy wonk, more comfortable in the salons of DC or New York than in upstate Pennsylvania or backwoods Alabama. The reason the tide has turned is that opponents of the President have drawn him out of the Beltway and made him fight on Main Street where he's not comfortable. 

The President's answer so far is to stay within his comfort zone. He is relying on support from special interest groups like the AARP, the AMA, or Big Labor--veteran Beltway lobbyists--to win the battle for him. 

In doing so, the President has set up an us-against-them scenario. In his mind and the minds of advisors David Axelrod, Rahm Emmanuel, Linda Douglass, and mouthpiece Robert Gibbs, they've taken over the government and they don't like being told what they can't do. 

Under this scenario it appears that we--the American people--have become the opponents, of our own government, according to Axelrod's spam message.  I am indignant and find it reprehensible that a president and his administration would think of the American people as his opposition.

Guess what, Dave? You haven't taken over anything. You control a building or two. Maybe state-run media. But that's not the government. The government's in session right now on Main Street. Read Amendment X. 

Just thought you might like to know.

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