Enter
you know, Obama is forced to respond to this (my God, he has to be
“reactive” and not “pro-active!”)
and he, too, comes out in favor of
marriage equality. And the next
thing you know, Jay-Z is on board
and a bunch of states are successfully making marriage equality legal
and Mark Kirk is offering gorgeously poetic support for the same and
even Lisa Murkowski is on board.
Power of the bully pulpit? Nay,
friends. Marriage equality was already very broadly popular at the
time Biden went on Meet the Press.
Biden just took that favorable environment and facilitated himself a
little change! Had Biden come out
in favor of something that wasn’t
popular, like, “Let’s bomb Ontario”
or, “Can we maybe stop putting
ramps in every recipe,” it wouldn’t
have moved the needle.
Now, unfortunately, here is
where what Cillizza mentions —
about the splintered media, and
the relative speed of the news —
really does come into play. If the
media game is all about “jump on
the shiny shiny,” there is not going
to be a whole lot of drive or effort
put behind covering or explaining the long process of “facilitating change in favorable environments” or the bargaining or the
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
06.30-07.07.13
trade-offs. Usually, you get that
story after something has already
been accomplished.
So you will get really good afterthe-fact stories, like this one from
Carrie Budoff Brown and Manu
Raju, titled “Inside the border
deal that almost failed.” If more
people took these stories seriously,
and understood all the complicated
wheeler-dealing that actually resolves these kinds of matters, they
Public opinion
on government spending
often moves in the
opposite direction as
presidential preferences
and government policy.”
would feel okay about letting go of
the myth of the bully pulpit. So, in
the end, where and on what occasion does the pre 6