Former President Barack Obama and former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — two old rivals who ran a bruising election campaign that year — are conjuring up a flimsy vision of what a barely functional Washington may look like.
Obama made his first post-presidential visit to the White House on Tuesday, demonstrating that he hasn't lost a political step by asking disheartened Democrats to "buck up" and remember what political power is for, as they prepare for a probable midterm election thrashing.
In the meantime, Romney, now a senator from Utah, is reverting to his old ways on Capitol Hill. He intends to vote for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, despite the fact that she is unqualified, in defiance of the majority of his Republican colleagues. Romney is also working to reach an agreement on Covid-19 funding, for which he has received some unusual praise from the White House."It seems like the good old days," said President Joe Biden in the White House's East Room, where Democrats cheered Obama's expansion of the Affordable Care Act.
But, as much as anyone would like to believe it, with Russia's atrocities in Ukraine and the Republican Party fully committed to ex-President Donald Trump's democracy-threatening authoritarianism, the good old days are far from over — and they weren't all that great, as anyone who remembers the bitter fights over Obamacare and government shutdowns will recall.Even so, if things were terrible before, they are unquestionably worse now.
Misinformation, conspiracy theories, lies, culture wars, and barely hidden racism now rule Washington, and are seen by a rising number of lawmakers as a path to power, based on recent events. In an address in Chicago on Wednesday, Obama will discuss misinformation.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump disciple, chastised Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday, claiming that the disarray of the Afghan withdrawal and Russia's invasion of Ukraine occurred because the US military focused on "wokeism" rather than strategy.
Gaetz's antics were a textbook example of a new breed of legislator who exploits their platform to produce viral media moments aimed to excite the fringe notions of conservative news, rather than to develop a legislative career.His outburst came as Republican senators renewed their smear campaign against Jackson, portraying her as a sex offender enabler despite a well-regarded sentence record as a judge. While Jackson's confirmation is likely certain, her treatment underscored how the process of appointing a new associate judge to the Supreme Court has devolved into a brutal political game for base voters.
Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, one of numerous senators who used the Jackson hearings to promote their presidential ambitions, said that the first Black woman appointed to the nation's highest court would have been soft on Nazis. Cotton mentioned former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the main prosecutor during the Nuremberg trials of Adolf Hitler's aides after WWII, in a Senate speech.
"Judge Jackson, as you may recall, resigned from the Supreme Court to prosecute the Nazi war crimes trial in Nuremberg. It's possible that Judge Jackson went to their defense "Cotton expressed his thoughts.Meanwhile, Republican North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn's assertion that he was invited to an orgy where he observed officials in the nation's anti-drug war snorting cocaine has reverberated around Washington. Members of the House GOP were not disciplined for attending white nationalist rallies or for attempting to conceal Trump's coup attempt. At Cawthorn, though, it drew a line. Because he embarrassed his colleagues in front of their constituents, the congressman received a censure.
The House GOP is already threatening to use its potential new majority next year to abolish the Select Committee investigating Trump's instigation of a Capitol insurgency on January 6, 2021, in yet another example of its twisted sense of right and wrong.
On Tuesday, Obama was not the only White House insider who returned to the spotlight in Washington. Ivanka Trump appeared before a House committee to testify on her father's defiance of the US history of peaceful power transitions.
The fact that a former first daughter's appearance in front of such a body is now At the White House, Obama was hailed as a hero.
He hadn't left the North Portico in over five years. Trump would never invite him back for the ceremonial unveiling of a former president's portrait. Given Trump's bigoted birtherism campaign against his predecessor, Obama's attendance at such an event is much less likely.
Back behind the presidential seal on Biden's podium, Obama joked about his former vice president's aviator sunglasses and ice cream addiction. He started his remarks by addressing his host as "Vice President Biden," but swiftly corrected himself, stating, "That was a joke!" However, two individuals close to Obama later told CNN's Jeff Zeleny that it was a slip of the tongue, and that that was not how Obama wanted to start his remarks praising the Affordable Care Act's legacy.regarded completely ordinary is testament to how twisted Washington has become.He recalled their joint efforts to pass the Affordable Care Act, which, after being signed into law in 2010, provided health insurance to millions of Americans for the first time.
Obama used the incident as a metaphor to encourage Democrats not to give up on reform, even if it falls short of their initial goals.
"I'm outside the arena, and I know how frustrated people — Democrats, Republicans, and independents — can become with Washington," Obama remarked. "Sometimes it feels like progress is moving too slowly. Victories are frequently insufficient. Consensus is difficult to achieve in a country as large and diverse as ours."The former president appeared to be speaking directly to his own party, which has been split between progressives and moderates, stalling Biden's ambitious social spending and climate change plan. Obama's eloquence outlined the choices for his party in simple but persuasive language as he laid out a mission statement for the midterms, as it did so frequently during his presidency.
"However, the Affordable Care Act demonstrates that if you are motivated by the underlying principle that by working together, we can better the lives of this and future generations," Obama added.
He continued, "You can improve America if you're tenacious — if you stick with it and are prepared to work through the challenges and criticism in order to improve where you fall short. You have the potential to affect millions of people's lives."
At a time when Trump's falsehoods about election fraud — and the ex-apparent President's new campaign for a second term that would almost certainly be more more autocratic and erratic than his first — Obama's faith in the American system sounded a touch outdated.Obama, on the other hand, had the luxury of walking out of the White House on Tuesday and removing the tie that he claims he no longer wears. Biden now bears the presidential weight of responding to Vladimir Putin's atrocities, the roaring tempest of increasing inflation, and a certain Republican midterm election thrashing.Democrats slammed Republican contender and former venture capitalist Mitt Romney as a callous corporate raider with no soul when he ran to deny Obama a second term in the White House in 2012.
Now, he could be their strongest Republican ally in Washington, and the fact that he could go from leading his party to criticizing its Trump-era extremism in the span of ten years demonstrates how far the GOP has evolved.
Romney is also advocating for a pragmatic approach to politics in his own right.
His backing for Jackson harkened back to a time when presidents could count on bipartisan support for Supreme Court nominees.That is no longer the case since the process has become so politicized. Democrats and Republicans fight over who puts ideology first in the election process. However, it is now the main driver of confirmation hearings.
Romney, who would never be mistaken for a liberal, claimed that after spending time with Jackson, he had a change of heart about her ahead of her Senate confirmation vote this week.
"I've come to the conclusion that she belongs in the mainstream. She's also a highly skilled, clever, and talented individual "Romney made the announcement to reporters. He stated that while he doesn't expect to agree with Jackson on everything, he will support her candidacy alongside Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Liza Murkowski of Alaska.
This week, Romney also brought another gift to the White House. He's leading a compromise effort to get $10 billion in funding for a new Covid-19 relief plan, which the White House believes is necessary to prevent a recurrence outbreak. The plan eliminates funding for worldwide vaccination campaigns that could prevent new variations from emerging. Romney, on the other hand, is the administration's best hope for securing the Republican votes needed to push any ultimate deal through the Senate.The former GOP contender, like Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, is one of the few in his party to call out Trump's radicalism, despite the fact that he is ostracizing himself from his own party.
Romney has recently received praise for warning in 2012 that Russia was America's top "geopolitical opponent."
In a presidential debate, Obama sneered at Romney, saying, "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back." However, following events, particularly the invasion of Ukraine, demonstrated that Moscow remains a major US foe.
In rough and tumble politics a decade ago, Romney's corporate conservatism and rich man's worldview were fair game for the Obama team.
However, Romney's late-career moral courage demonstrates that Democrats' characterization of a man without a soul was grossly exaggerated.
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