In a fascinating political sideshow, Obama and the conservative firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh are engaged in a public conversation that is a mixture of a duel and a bullfight. Limbaugh kicked it off by declaring that, contra the general spirit of national unity, he was hoping Obama would fail. Obama, speaking to the House Republicans, suggested that they had a choice between listening to people like Limbaugh, and working constructively with him to help save the nation. Limbaugh responded with a counter-blast on his blog. There is more to come.
Terry Mancour has a smart take on what's going on. He argues that Obama is very deliberately targeting Limbaugh. By identifying him as the epitome of destructive partisanship and extreme ideology, he seeks to draw at least some GOP congressmen into a bipartisan partnership (to avoid looking like extremists themselves) and thus, ultimately, to isolate Limbaugh and his kin. There's already early evidence that this strategy is working. One of the interesting things about this, as Mancour, suggests, is that Limbaugh - a canny operator himself - knows he's being targeted, and hopes to turn the "feud" to his advantage.
Media commentator Michael Wolff thinks Limbaugh is losing the game:
Right now Rush is being played. The Obama dinner with conservative columnists, shortly before his inauguration, was as much about excluding Rush as coddling the columnists. Not only did the conservatives fawn, but Rush fumed. It got under his skin. Indeed, the rumor that he might in fact be there (likely coming from the Obama camp), and then his evident lack of an invitation, highlighted the slight. He’s tried to make it out to be a political point ever since, but mostly he sounds like a guy who’s hurt he didn’t get invited to the hot party.
The whole thing is interesting in part because it reminds us of Obama's extraordinary mixture of idealism and low cunning, King and Capone. This minor skirmish is part of his larger goal: to drain the American political culture of its poison, or at least some of it - to restore a measure of civility to the nation's discourse. The way he's going about it, however, displays the icy guile of a seasoned Chicago operator.
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