You know things are bad for President Obama when Paul Krugman professes to lose faith in his presidency one year in. “I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama,” Krugman writes on his blog, “who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.” This scathing critique is in response to Obama declining to call on House Democrats to pass the Senate’s health-care bill, and instead suggesting “that we try to move quickly to coalesce around those elements of the package that people agree on,” as he told George Stephanopoulos yesterday.
That strategy is, in fact, picking up some steam. Rahm Emanuel floated it with House leaders yesterday, and some of them seem receptive to it. It may cost Obama Paul Krugman. But then again, Krugman has been criticizing Obama the entire year, and he hasn’t given up on him yet. Krugman and Obama are basically the Lockhorns, that comic-strip couple that stays together for some reason despite sniping at each other every day. Except much funnier.
