Sore Loser Michael Gerson Blames Obama, Forgets Himself

I guess I should sympathize with Michael Gerson, who seems to be having a hard time coping with the fact that his old boss George W. Bush left office to the tune of a resounding Bronx cheer from the angry people he so ineptly governed.

Gerson should be counting his blessings. Only in Washington could a guy like him, whose great achievement in life was to put the words in W's mouth, be rewarded with a column in a respectable liberal newspaper like the Washington Post. Go figure.

Like his friends Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, Gerson has joined the sore loser's club. The acclaim and popularity of Barack Obama drives them nuts. They know that the better Obama does, the worse ol' W and the gang will look to history.

Today's Gerson column offers the latest example. Obama has not even reached the 100-day mark, and Gerson is out there with the ludicrous suggestion that Team Audacity is responsible for the state of our polarized politics. Along the way, he makes the even more ludicrous argument that the Democratic Party's intent to pass a budget that reflects Democratic values and policy is somehow duplicitous and divisive.

Earth to Mike: This is what we have elections for.

As proof of Obama's alleged "shame," Gerson refers readers to the outrageous Democratic tactic of ... using the federal budget law in order to pass a budget.

Gerson needs to read some history. (I know a good book about Tip O'Neill.) The 1974 budget act was the creation of conservative Republicans and Democrats who objected to the sloppy way that Congress was funding the U.S. government. It includes a provision called reconciliation, which, to put it simply, exempts certain tax and spending decisions from the threat of a Senate filibuster.

That old liberal Ronald Reagan was the first to see the advantage in needing 51 votes, and not 60, for passage: The Revolution may not have happened if Reagan had not pushed his tax and budget cuts through Congress using reconciliation in 1981.

Bill Clinton then helped curb the Reagan budget deficits, and tug the nation on a path to the prosperity of the 1990s, by using reconciliation to levy modest tax hikes on some of the rich folks Reagan had treated so kindly.

The point is that reconciliation is merely a tool, employed by both parties when they find it useful, and not the evil loophole that Republican senators are now decrying.

Indeed, Gerson appears to oh-so-conveniently forget that, after getting elected in part because he promised to end the partisan bickering in Washington, George W. Bush used reconciliation to ram the Bush tax cuts through Congress in 2003.

And Gerson also forgets how, in the months after the 9-11 attacks, the Democrats in Congress put partisanship aside, and worked in concert with their president—until Rove, seeing a chance to steal seats in the 2002 midterm election, kicked them in the teeth. Remember, Mike, the job you guys did on former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, the maimed and decorated Vietnam veteran, who was labeled a coddler of Osama bin Laden?

Gerson concludes with the totally fanciful suggestion—or perhaps it's his version of the Big Lie—that congressional Republicans are the victims of Obama's "polarizing" behavior.

I will let you readers tune in to Rush Limbaugh, or the Fox talk shows, or look at the "NO" votes cast by Republicans in Congress, and decide what Gerson has been smoking when he asserts that "it would have been relatively easy" for Obama to exercise "outreach" and corral "many Republicans" for a bipartisan stimulus package.

It is a "sad, unnecessary shame," says Gerson, that so many reasonable Republicans are now "nursing grievances" after being so mishandled by Team Audacity.

Gerson needs to leave sore loser land and take a page from Pat Buchanan, Peggy Noonan, or William Safire—all of whom so ably made the transition from White House wordsmith to widely respected, and ruggedly independent, conservative columnist. It can be done. It just takes some thought.

On Facebook? You can keep up with Thomas Jefferson Street blog postings through Facebook's Networked Blogs.

• Read more by John Aloysius Farrell.
• Read more from the Thomas Jefferson Street blog.