Peggy Noonan Schools David Corn: 'When a President Wants to Make Something Happen, He Can'
David Corn, the perilously liberal Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, got a much-needed civics lesson from the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday.
After Corn carped and whined about House Republicans blocking Barack Obama's fiscal agenda, Noonan replied, "When a President wants to make something happen, he can make it happen, and he can't sit back and say, 'Oh, they wouldn't talk. They wouldn't do this. I'm so sorry.' You make it happen if you are President" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
DAVID CORN, MOTHER JONES: The problem is that edge that you speak about is now controlling the Republican Party, at least in the House. That's the one reason why President Obama was not able to get the grand bargain with, with John Boehner and the others because, you know, they were pulled too far to, to the right.
I think this is, you know, on the issue of adultness, I think the President has worked very hard the past year to show that he will even go against some in his own party to cut deals and compromises and try to move past these contentious financial issues, and you're going to see this again with the automatic budget cuts that were negotiated, that he negotiated last year with the Republicans. And it's the Republicans now who are running away from the deal. So, again and again, I think this edge that...
PEGGY NOONAN, WALL STREET JOURNAL: Mmm.
CORN: ...you speak about in such, you know, chagrined tones is not just an edge anymore. It's the center of the party, and that's why Mitt Romney had such a hard time in the primaries.
NOONAN: David, Republican suburbanites would be shocked to know that the edge, quote, unquote is "controlling how they think and how they vote." This is a big, broad, interesting party. Second thing is, you mentioned Obama. Read Robert Caro's latest book. When a President wants to make something happen, he can make it happen and he can't sit back and say, "Oh, they wouldn't talk. They wouldn't do this. I'm so sorry."
CORN: Oh, come on. It's a Republic...
NOONAN: You make it happen if you are President.
Indeed you do.
But this is the typical nonsense we've been hearing from liberal media members since Obama was inaugurated.
Even when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress with a filibuster-proof Senate his first two years in office, Republicans were to blame for any liberal piece of legislation that didn't pass.
More importantly, the real obstruction as it pertains to fiscal matters has clearly been from Senate Democrats who haven't proposed a budget since February 2009.
This always eludes liberal media members like Corn when they complain about Republicans blocking the President's fiscal agenda.
I wonder why.
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Comments
Good answer
Submitted by ant on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 8:26pm.
Every other average Jane and Joe that works for a living is expected to 'make things work' despite the usual obstacles and resistance the natural world/other people throw at us...yet the most powerful man in the Country gets excuses made for him. I suspect most of that 'wahh, we couldn't get anything done' despite two years of majority control is not expect to be believed by the general population...I suspect it has always been a desperate ploy to keep their leftist 'faithful' from feeling betrayed and scammed.
Problem is
Submitted by Tjexcite on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 9:10pm.
You can't make communism without a barrel of a gun. You have to make people be okay with small steps one step at a time and then you have it. And blaming the other side is but a step to delegitimize any opposition. 100 years in the making.
Doctor, doctor
Submitted by sergeant stogie on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 9:40pm.
What's that Corn doing in my poop?
Why, whining about Republicans, of course!
Boy Baraka has a 'fiscal
Submitted by killa37 on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 9:41pm.
Boy Baraka has a 'fiscal agenda'??? I mean, besides spending, borrowing, and printing??? Who knew?? I don't think he's even got a vote from his own party with regards to any budget he's proposed in the last couple of years.....................
~"Adultness"?
Submitted by Wrathful Brunette on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 9:48pm.
The English language just died a little.
It's
Submitted by grammajane on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 10:07pm.
amusing these far left radicals are so worried about Conservatives going to far right. This prezzy doesn't want anything to happen, unless it is entirely his way. My way=Hi way. He can't even get a budget. Peggy, keep schooling these elite, arrogant, and so-called know-it-alls who whine and blame to try and sound intellegent
Has any CEO ever
Submitted by Okieflyover on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 10:31pm.
Done such a poor job of managing his business than this president has? His budget of a $1.4T deficit was based on a 5.5% growth rate. And it looks like he will have to raise the debt ceiling before the November elections even though he projected the last raise to last until at least January.
He is just so bad at this. Combine that with his class warfare and attacks on private industry and tell me why anyone not named Julia would vote for this guy. ????
That's easy.
Submitted by goodone91 on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 2:00am.
Entitlements.
Matthew's"He's Got 'The Worst Kind of a Notion of the Presidency
Submitted by Gary Hall on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 11:17pm.
In Chris Matthew's, "He's Got 'The Worst Kind of a Notion of the Presidency," as Noel covered, here, the entire case against David Corn's argument is laid to waste (he was being interviewed by MSNBC's Alex Witt):
Mathews: The day he got inaugurated, he sent us all home and said, “Thank you, now watch how smart I am.” That's the worst kind of a notion of the presidency. [..]
What are we trying to do in this administration? Why does he want a second term? Would he tell us? What's he going to do in the second term? More of this? Is this it? Is this as good as it gets? Where are we going? Are we going to do something the second term? He has yet to tell us. He has not said one thing about . .(a whole list of issues were laid out) [..]
How? Just tell us. Why are we in this fight with him? Just tell us, Commander, give us our orders and tell us where we’re going, give us the mission. And he hasn't done it. [..]
I don't have a sense that he's ever had a meeting. I hear stories that you will not believe. Not a single phone call since the last election. . .
. . the interview continues . .
WITT : Tell me one.
MATTHEWS: They don't call. He never calls. That's the, that’s the message. Members of Congress, I keep asking, “When did you hear from him last?”
WITT: Silence.
MATTHEWS: He doesn't like their company.
WITT: You've just…
MATTHEWS: That's a problem, by the way.
Well, it certainly is a problem for the the status of the United States of America; however, it would be a huge problem for President Obama, if only our national media would take this story, and dozens and dozens of other shocking truths, that numerous liberal insiders have spoken about. How in the world can this, and the other affirmation of the complete lack of leadership qualities that frames the skill set of Barack Obama be so completely censored from the broad 'voting' public?
Now, will someone in the national media (and it can be Fox, if no one else steps up to the plate), invite the players in for a panel discussion and let's see them go through a few of these. Let's hear the left and the right debate the charges which have been laid out - from the left. Let's see them defend that.
The name of the show could be, "Is the President a slacker, or not."
(;~/ gary
Great point, Gary
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 8:47am.
Obama promised to change the way Washington does business. We all knew he lacked the experience to do that, but in a sense, he has made a change in the sense that his White House doesn't cooperate with the Congress at all. Noonan is right -- he has the power to make things happen.
But he doesn't know how to use that power. That was evident in both the Stimulus bill and Obamacare, where he let two idiots like Pelosi and Reid drive the train and then signed the crap into law.
Personally I think it's because he's trapped between hiding his executive ignorance and masking his socialist agenda, and he is less and less successful at both.
Galv . . that big trapped feeling
Submitted by Gary Hall on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 10:13am.
That "trapped" analysis has found it's way into my noggin more than a few times, as well. I've come to believe that he's more, or less, faking it; he's comfortable delivering his rhetoric [propaganda]], but he doesn't even know how to deliver on his agenda - just buying time.
The sad dilemma here is that the national media finds itself trapped as well. I sense that many realize this sad state of affairs, including the understanding that he has little clue in how to lead to get his (their commonly shared) agenda accomplished. Yet, since they pushed, then paved the way, for his ascent to the White House, they'd rather stay with the sinking ship for 4 more years, than admit their failed game which would result in their arch enemy, the Republicans, taking it all back.
(;~/ gary
Corn
Submitted by mmilesll on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 11:28pm.
Looks like a freak, sounds like a freak and therefore is a freak. This nut job has been lying for years and if Meet the Press would have had a strong conservative-like Levin-on they would have ripped the freak a new ass. The wack jobs always seem to forget that the democrats run the Senate and they haven't had a budget for 3 years now. It's time for Corn to go back down in the basement.
It's no accident that he's landed at Mother Jones
Submitted by Galvanic on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 8:52am.
Given his monotonous babble and his temperment, Corn is the perpetual Ivy League campus newspaper editor.
The President can make things
Submitted by robert108 on Sun, 05/06/2012 - 11:43pm.
The President can make things happen only if he knows how to make them happen. His lifelong adherence to Marxism does not prepare him to know how to produce economic growth, since Marx believed profit, the vital necessity for economic growth, represented theft from the "workers". Not a recipe for prosperity.
Robert Caro, who has written volumes about
Submitted by Rush Fan on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 3:59am.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson, was on Fareed Zakaria GPS Sunday. Zakaria asked Caro about the difference in style between Obama and Johnson in passing legislation through Congress. ZAKARIA: Would Johnson have taken a more activist role? Caro's reply:
"Ohhhh... It's tooooooo HAAARD..."
Submitted by Annie Ashe Fields on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 6:43am.
"Those GOP.... They're MEEEEEAAANN...."
The nancy-boy pansy-ass WHINING says VOLUMES about these over-mothered self-esteem projects.
If LIberals are so smart, why don’t they ever learn anything?
Submitted by needle on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 7:35am.
The left considers themselves smart, in fact they alone are smart pretty much, and everyone else is dumb or retarded.
As far as they are concerned, how much one is on board and in agreement with their Progressivism is a direct measure of how smart one is.
If Progressives are so smart, why don’t they ever learn anything?
The answer is that they refuse to learn from their mistakes; instead they always blame others. It seems their parents never held their children accountable.
The one thing that they have learned really well, is how NOT to learn anything, and to blame others for the dysfunction that results from their defective nonsense.
- Looking forward to the self-annihilation of the Manipulated Stories Machine.
It would be different....
Submitted by GeneralAl on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 8:14am.
" More importantly, the real obstruction as it pertains to fiscal matters has clearly been from Senate Democrats who haven't proposed a budget since February 2009."
It would be different if the RINOs like McConnell and Graham would stand up to Harry Reid as well as take it public on a daily basis. Instead, they bash Paul Ryan and merely speak in the well of the Senate when it comes to Digger O'Harry!
"Old Soldiers never die, they just fade away"!
Its who they are..
Submitted by Aubrey on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 8:33am.
Ask Corn or any other Leftist in this Country if they would prefer Communism or Capitalism and watch them take a long pause before they dance an answer.
One addition...
Submitted by Bill Brasky on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 12:26pm.
You make it happen if you are a COMPETENT president. We have an inflexible buffoon in the White House.
Peggy, Peggy, Peggy
Submitted by alvin on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 7:30pm.
Just ask George Bush about immigration and social security reform.