Obama Our Chamberlain?

Today the headline on HuffPo is "Leaderless" and refers to the White House's lobbying against a robust public option in the Senate in the name of bipartisan cover to the Blue Dog Democrats for their upcoming election. This at a time when Republican identification is at an all-time low. The President and his cabinet are at risk of making the word "bipartisan" as contemptible a word as "appeasement" has been since WWII.

"Appeasement" became a dirty words in diplomacy because it described the policies of Neville Chamberlain toward Hitler, a policy of ceding the Nazis territory and power in the name of keeping the peace. Appeasement ignored the clearly imperialist plans of the Nazis. Appeasement was motivated by the highest principles, principles the Nobel Peace Committee would approve of. Our own Secretary of State at the time, Henry Stimson, holding the torch of the excellent principle that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail," would not spy on this rising bellicose nation but instead treated the Germans with the cookies and milk of honorable dealings even after the Nazis had shown their contempt for such girlie behavior by taking advantage of it to advance their plans for domination and defeat ours for compromise.

Nazi comparisons are easy because they are seen as so extreme. But the situation today is extreme, and like Chamberlain, our administration is pooh-poohing the risk, holding to its lofty principles of making nice with the Republicans long after they have publicly announced and publicly demonstrated their own obstructionism to the welfare of the citizens of this country. People are dying. This is war. And the President is letting his ego attachment to the idea that he can win over these guys with reason, along with his Chief of Staff's maneuvers to give cover to the Blue Dogs he recruited and owns, sell the rest of us down the river to the actuarial ovens of the insurance companies.