Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 29, 2010

He gets it. We all get it. It’s the shuck and jive of the office that he doesn’t get. Some “Heat of the Night.” maybe even a little “Burn, Baby, Burn.” Just avoid the Mau Mau schtick and you’ll be okay. (For the usual crowd, This is satire.)

“It” is a political McGuffin. It doesn’t matter what “it” is as long as it can be used by politicians to manipulate people.

No, no! Mau-Mauing the flack-catchers is a most excellent plan! See Tom Wolfe.

Coyoty, most readers probably don’t know what a mcguffin is!

Yeah, what’s a McGuffin? Does it come with cheese? Can you supersize it?

Obama is a smart and reasonable person, and as such he suffers from a problem that’s very common among smart and reasonable people: he doesn’t understand that there are unreasonable people in the world, people who have their own agendas and aren’t going to be swayed by reasonable argument. He doesn’t get that the R party cares far more about being in power than it does about the good of the country (not that the D party is particularly different in that respect, of course), and is quite willing to put the nation through some unpleasant times in order to bring him down. He keeps plugging away on this “bipartisanship” thing, convinced that if he just makes one more reasonable explanation of why we should all come together and Do The Right Thing, he’ll finally convince them and we’ll all have a nice chorus of Kum Bay Yah.

Perhaps the impending electoral two-by-four upside the head will get his attention. It worked for Bill Clinton…

In my state, we have one party control the executive branch while another controls the legislative. Not a lot gets done between the veto and threat of a veto. This is good. They have to get together and hammer out something that is acceptable to each side. Thankfully, not much gets done.

In Washington the scales are not so nicely balanced. While crying bipartisanship, one side railroads through their major bill. Lack of cooperation between sides afterward, wonder why? As in my state, this has resulted in not a lot getting done. Great! Government that governs least governs best.

Gotta thunk dat dis mae bee Y ders too parties.

Fair is fair! If Clinton had to define “is,” Obama can be asked to define “it.”

Gee, as America has not had a real leader in so long, they seem to have forgotten how a leader should act… How did FDR react to issues? With a calm cool contemplative perspective, as a real leader should. As did Lincoln, as did Washington…

Not ranting away like a Snake Oil Salesman trying to sell you their magic potion…

I think we’re missing the subtlety of GT’s message today. With 2 very distinct references to President Clinton in today’s strip, Obama is being gently urged to learn from history and do what Clinton did in similart circumstances, with the last panel warning him not to study his methodology too far (hence Rahm’s panic).

Sincere communication that extends beyond your base is the key to surviving political storms, and both Reagan and Clinton were masters at it. Obama’s attitude thus far is that with both houses of Congress at his beck and call, such 2-way communication has been beneath him. GT is astutely reminding him that his place in history will require it. Those who keep urging Obama to continue to scold and ignore people who differ with his political perspectives are whom the Tea Party is counting on to secure themselves a very successful November.

We need leaders who feel our pain, not leaders who cause our pain.

Nem: I’d say he’s been TOO cordial to the parties. He’s tried the Clinton compromise thing and got us fuddled.

He kept the same Repub appointed guys who started the bailout of the biggies in place and they kept up the mishandling of funds.

His failure is, in fact, that he has been too much like Clinton in compromising keeping his promise to work with both parties but letting both run over him.

What we needed was an LBJ who could get things done because he knew where the bodies were buried. Such an adviser would serve Obama well in the next two years.

NOTE TO GOCOMICS. I AM SPELLING THE PRESIDENT’S NAME RIGHT. REVISE YOU SPELLCHECK. HE’S BEEN IN OFFICE TWO YEARS!!!!!

Osh: someone got the Wolfe-man reference!!!!

Freeholder, I cannot agree.

First, the communication has to be to the people, not simply the opposition party leaders, and Obama is suffering the consequences of not keeping his campaign promises of a transparent administration. He doesn’t feel their pain, he blocks their pain out, and he scolds people who don’t follow his lead. You simply never saw Clinton or Reagan do that. It took Obama to create the Tea Party.

Secondly, his insistance on new legislation that does not represent what people say they need today to help them financially is catching up to him. The Republicans saw this early on, and now Obama can’t say that bad legistlation was the result of party cooperation. Some folks still don’t understand that calling the Rep’s the party of “No” drives up the Repubs credibility with the voters who are in pain.

Third, Obama simply hasn’t extended a sincere hand to the opposite side of the isle. Ironically, he was in the best possible position to do so, but he missed his opportunity to persuade Pelosi and Reid to stop being bullies and play nicely. If Obama doesn’t seem to care about what’s going to happen to them, it’s probably because he knows that they have helped engender the toxic political climate that is now choking them off.

Kilgore Trout said, about 1 hour ago

Gee, as America has not had a real leader in so long, they seem to have forgotten how a leader should act… How did FDR react to issues? With a calm cool contemplative perspective, as a real leader should. As did Lincoln, as did Washington…

Hmm, lets see, FDR lied and schemed to take America into war, and then interned Japanese Citizens, among whom were some of America’s greatest War Heroes. That’s calm, cool and contemplative. Oh and Lincoln suspended the Constitution and engaged in an unlawful war of aggression against States…..

Seems “O” is the only “smart and reasonable” person in the room. What’s that from Woodward’s book - oh yes, Obama always thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.

Results: United States - 0. States Rights and Smaller Government: Coming to bat.

freeholder1 said, about 1 hour ago

“What we needed was an LBJ who could get things done because he knew where the bodies were buried. Such an adviser would serve Obama well in the next two years.”

Another good one! Yes we need an LBJ, who factually lied us into an expanded Vietnam War which killed over 50,000 Americans for nothing more than his ego! Oh, and the Great Society, which we are still disbanding in order to avoid national bankruptcy!

@ freeholder- I get that. But it’s not especially funny satire. Maybe you should have thrown in a line about fried chicken or something, I hear black people like that too.

“States Rights and Smaller Government: Coming to bat.”

Not really. Every Republican candidate since Reagan has promised to shrink government. Few specifics are ever offered. Once elected, it is all forgotten. Thus years of Republican control have resulted in no shrinking of government, and ballooning of the deficit.

“we need a man with balls”

That’s Joe Biden’s role.

ricmac1937: You nailed it. As a young, stupid, scared kid under fire in Korea, I hated Harry Truman - or thought I did. Now, at 80, I get the fact that he was one of the smartest, most able presidents in our history. And I know why. Unlike the cowardly pair, Bush and Chaney, Truman fought in a war…on OUR side, not on their rich fatcats’ side.

There’s a theory floating around that the President is just a figurehead, that some group behind the scenes decides what he’ll do next. Thus the election is about lack of zits rather than presence of principles, knowledge, skills and experience. Thus the people want to know that the First Lady is wearing this week… grumble grumble bleeep grumble grumble, I know, I know

Truman is considered a political godlike figure by many people, including conservatives. The question is, would today’s Democratic party nominate a Harry Truman in 2012? Or for that matter, a John F. Kennedy?

If they did, I would vote for him/her, and I suspect that most of the Tea Party folks would, too.

Btw, Mike Price, thanks for your first actual contribution to the forum, and thanks for your service.

Today’s comments are extraordinarily diverse, bringing in everything from Roosevelt’s calmness and Truman’s balls to the sagacity of LBJ and the Teaparty. Nemesys even misreads GT’s riff on Clinton (who vacuously required a definition of what a sexual offense “is”).

GT is satirizing precisely all these media-inspired attempts to define the nation’s media-fed crisis as a “historical moment.” It’s nothing of the sort. One party (Republicans) is dying, another (Teapartiers) struggles to be born, while the Democrats in office doubt their leadership because they listen only to the media-hyped outrage of a minority chronically opposed to all government whatsoever.

Democrats—-and all those responsible voters who remain a plurality if not a majority—-are fortunate to have a leader who keeps his eye on the real vicissitudes of history, instead of imagining he can fashion its outcome through a single bold action.

Roosevelt tried in vain to get us out of the Depression until WW II finally did the job. Truman’s bold decisions to use the A-bomb and fire MacArthur were made with his (myopic) eyes shut and his fingers crossed. Historians make heroes out of the most unlikely leaders. Even Nixon and Carter and Bush II will one day be acclaimed for their foresight.

FDR was a certified nut-job, but he followed hitler’s lead quite well. info act stuff outed him: no one at the time, thought it odd that a huge air wing and army were parked in Hawaii along with nearly all the floaty toys we had, another air wing in the northern phillipines, and an invasion force was moving into northeastern japan? my daddy was in the USMC before & during WW2, and despised FDR as a sneaky con-artist. guess what: pearl harbor was a retaliatory strike. good disinformation PR act there! fooled (almost) all the people all the time…..but look at all the territory it got us! just like what we did to Spain….but that’s another skeleton…

palin, I stand by my interpretation. As an artist. Garry loves inserting little innuendos into his work, and today’s strip was a masterpiece example of it. Perhaps your love of literature sometimes leads you to take things too literally .

The effectiveness of leaders at any level is judged by history simply as a function of their ability to make decisions and execute them. Whether those decisions were right or wrong is another question entirely. I happen to think that Obama’s ability to make decisions and see them through is an admirable and surprising quality, even as I disagree with what those decisions have been and how they have been executed.

“W” didn’t understand squat. HIs supporters don’t either. They’ve totally forgotten Newt and the intent of Republicans to fight ANY suggestion Democrats make. The right-wingers need to get over the “terrible twos”, grow up, and grow a real pair. They deny every stupid mistake, or stupid intentional act, since Reagan walked across the threshold to enter the White house. They will never learn, or grow up.

They do NOT know what “it” is.

Nemesys,

Your admiration for Obama’s decisiveness doesn’t square with the notion that GT is urging him to follow Clinton’s example of evasiveness when the former president asked for a definition of “is.”

Serious students of literature and history (including Obama but not, I maintain, self-deluding leaders like Clinton and Carter) have an advantage over the most successful but illiterate leaders such as Truman, LBJ, or Bush II (each of whom led the nation to back an unpopular war). The advantage consists in being able to distinguish fiction from reality.

Note that I say “students” of literature. Most readers of books—-and of cartoons like Doonesbury—-use fiction to escape from reality, whereas a student will always criticize the fiction to show where it falls short of the reality. (The same goes for specious historical parallels.)

I have watched most of the presient’s speeches and interviews - he yells and pounds on the podium in a large crowd and is polite and cool in a one-to-one or a small crowd. Why do you persist in misrepresenting him? Everything else is funny - but not this.

Take a lesson from the Dukakis campaign (Willie Horton ad), you can’t fight FEAR with reason. You have to generate greater fear in the opposite direction. I think a return to 2008 and the bank disaster, if portrayed correctly, should be sufficient. Anybody want a repeat performance?

Nemesys, which country’s politics have you been following??

You say “Third, Obama simply hasn’t extended a sincere hand to the opposite side of the isle. Ironically, he was in the best possible position to do so, but he missed his opportunity …”

This is the same robotic mantra the Republican leader say in every single interview I’ve seen in for two years, and it’s a lie, and they know it’s a lie, and everyone knows it’s a lie.

Obama has catered in every way to get some - ANY - Republican support for ANYTHING, and has failed. The Limbaugh-DeMint-Fox News Party strategy is to participate in NO WAY whatsoever on any policies that could possibly help – whether they agree with them in principle or not – sabotage the country, and then blame it all on the uppity black guy. And it’s working

Wow doesn’t anyone get it? Democrats should run as democrats and stand up for middle class people…we are becoming extinct