Mr. Trumka, should President Barack Obama put forth, what you and others on the Left term, a “bold” plan for creating jobs this September, one he knows the Tea Party-Republicans will block, or should he put forth a plan that he feels he could get through the House?
In the first instance, the President, having received the Republicans' rejection of his “bold” new jobs initiative, could take solace in the fact that the Republicans would have positioned themselves, as they have done so many times this year, as obstructionists to job creation and thereby providing an attractive foe for him to oppose in the 2012 elections. But there is a human dilemma here….
Is it enough to just back the Republicans into a strategically perilous position come November 2012? Or should the President be concerned with the fact that millions of people currently facing incredible hardships without a weekly salary, would continue to suffer, while we all snicker at the supposedly, politically, doomed job killing Republicans, all the way until the elections?
In the second instance, the President might put forth a plan that, while not “bold” enough to suit the desires of many on the Left, could very well help to alleviate some joblessness and allow him to improve conditions once Democrats take back the House and hold the Senate following the elections.
This is a worthy question indeed, one that looks at real time suffering and hardship. This is more than a Presidential question. This is a human question as well as a political question. It is easy to say that “President Obama needs to lead!” When viewed within the political landscape of 2011, however, it is harder to say what this leadership should actually be.
Mr. Trumka, this afternoon on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, you were asked this very same question by NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd. And, as much as I have always admired you sir, you did not answer the question. Instead you kept repeating the phrase “He needs to lead,” without offering a specific opinion or understanding of what “leading” means, specifically as it relates to the obstructionist Republican Party, which is bent on destroying the President at the expense of this nation. No one can lead a group which refuses to follow.
Todd: Richard Trumka, the President of the AFLCIO, of course, the largest labor Federation…. Mr. Trumka, it’s nice to see you.
Trumka: Thanks for having me on….
Todd: Let’s just go right to what you’re hoping to hear from the President. Seems to me based on the reporting from the Washington Post this morning, a little bit of a split…of…how big to go, and what to put out there…. Do you put out a plan that you’re fighting for, maybe all the way until November of 2012 or you put out something that you think you can get passed in this Congress?
After stating that history will judge the President on what he does in the coming weeks on job creation, and reminding viewers how tough the economy is, Mr. Trumka said this:
Trumka: He can do it one of two ways, he can be bold, he can LEAD and say this is what’s necessary to fix the problem, or he can let the tea party LEAD. And let them continue to put out programs that attack the middleclass or Social Security and pretend that deficit reduction is the real problem here. Deficit reduction isn’t the problem; we have a jobs crisis, that’s the problem.
I was happy to see Chuck Todd bring the conversation back to the extremely difficult political reality of the United States Congress. But, here again, without even offering an inkling of how exactly the President would “lead” a bunch of destructive anti-Obama legislators, Trumka returns to the old refrain, “He needs to lead.”
Todd: There is a political reality…you’ll have to get something past in a Congress that is divided. The Democrats control the Senate nominally; the Republicans with a strong control of the House…. Do you blame the President for trying to find something that he thinks he could get passed the House?
Trumka: Oh well, he needs to LEAD and he needs to say this is what will solve the problem. Not just hit it around the edges a little bit here and there. Knowing that even if it does get passed then it’s not going to solve the problem…. Look, if he takes that approach he lets the Tea Party people in the Congress control the agenda. He wasn’t elected for that, he was elected to LEAD. We have a jobs crisis; he should be LEADING on that…..
This interview illustrates what this President has had to deal with since the day he entered office. For, unbelievably, he has had to struggle with his hands tied behind his back by one political party while having to face the wrath of not being able to use those very same hands by the other…. He is, without a doubt, presiding over one of the most impossible presidencies in the history of this nation.