Opinion: Why President Elect Obama Won

Here is my analysis of a few key factors that elected our new President.  First just a few points.  This was not a landslide, not even close.  While Mr. Obama has in my view a clear mandate, he still has 46% plus who remain unsold.  However, gathering 52% is a good sign for his administration.  Secondly, statistically speaking he did NOT inspire people to vote more than in past elections.  The percentage of the voters relevant to total population was statistically insignificant in 2008 than 2004 and 2000. 

1) Ability to stay on message.  This is called by Jim Collins “The Hedgehog Principle”.  Hedgehogs in the business and political world have the ability to stay focused and on message.  They know what they do well and they make that their selling point.  The Obama campaign was highly disciplined.  Other than the occassional gaffe that he made against certain radio show commentators, which hurt him in all probability, the campaign, also helped by media which did not press the stories, would not allow themselves to be taken off their message, which was simple.  The message was, things are bad, we can bring about change.  The changes sought were tied to the current dissatisfaction the country has with the Bush Administration, but was generally short on details.  This was picked up by many as being vapid.  However, give credit to the Obama Campaign handlers.  They made a choice to keep him away from town hall venues and press interviews where he could be hurt.  I believe his relatively poor performance at Saddleback showed their wisdom in this and solidified their resolve not to let events they couldn’t control, such as the economy alter their message of change.  If anything they took the events handed to them and used the events to be an echo of a broad theme.

2) The financial debacle.  One of the things that in contrast to Sen. McCain’s reaction of “I must do something” was that the Obama handlers used the event to broadcast their theme.  This was in disregard to many of the inconvenient facts – the much of the problems of the banking mess were caused by policies created under President Carter and greatly expanded under President Clinton.  The correlation picked up by some in the media – mostly print – of ties to Fannie and Freddie and high ranking Democrats never was picked up.  Obama stayed out of the fray but framed the fray to buoy his premise that “change is needed”.  It worked.  While the crisis was not cooked by campaign, the decision to stay outside the mess initially showed him being detached, and that is not always a bad thing as it is more objective.  Many polls showed that McCain was gaining traction and had a slight lead up to this point.  This was caused in part by some slips by the Obama campaign, the momentum of the GOP Convention – which was effective, and the initial excitement of Sarah Palin into the foray. 

3) Ability to appear credible.  Sen. Obama’s largest hurdle was to keep the excitement of his base, youth and left to left of center Americans and expand his credibility to John and Mary Q. Public who are Center to Center Right.  America was seen, and most identified themselves as “Conservative”.  There is one bit of news that shows this to be true, at least socially.  California’s repudiation by the voters of same sex marriage – in a year where the left and center left continued to show their appeal over right and center right candidates by a 15% point margin – indicates that even among “blue states” there is a cultural position of maintaining the status quo.  Although he fared badly at Saddleback, and any objective reporting of the event along with the shift of pubilc sentiment alludes to that, the fact that Sen. Obama was visibly comfortable with the Evangelical community is important.  There is a reason.  Although politically many ” ‘Black’ Evangelicals” are left and left of center, culturally many of them are right of center – to include school reform (vouchers, NCLB) and most notably views on homosexuality  This allowed those Evangelicals who are more Centrist and whose interpretation of their Christitanity leads them to value social activism and bread and butter issues highly – such as The Soujourners – to ally with Mr. Obama.  Obama also showed a shift – and it was a major one – during the debates.  Stating that “conditions on the ground” would dictate American policy in Iraq was startling and far more hawkish than anything he or any other Democrat had said during the primary season.  This combined with his statements of expanding the war in Afghanistan and putting pressure on Pakistan took away the “wimp factor” in many.  Mr. Obama’s shifting to the center from the hard left of the Democratic base is as old as politics.  Run to your base in the primary, tack to the mainstream in general election.  It will be interesting to see how he governs.

4.  Weariness of the Bush Administration.  This is the real reason why Sen. Obama won the election.  I will not offer conjecture if Sen. Clinton would have fared better, but I think it would have been about the same.  By all counts this was the nation speaking with their ballots of their dissatisfaction with Iraq policies and the numerous failures of the Bush Administration – and there are many to bring to light.  The Bush Administration started losing this election with their victory in 2000.  Fifty percent of the nation was not happy with that result.  President Bush did enjoy many political and policy victories.  NCLB will remain with the nation in some form for many years.  Efforts to change the political and social framework in Africa will also remain.  Also, it is likely that US policies in the Middle East will remain in some form and that the “War on Terror” will be funded with many of the policies once opposed by the Dem base suddenly accepted.  The NYT reported about GITMO on Wednesday and it was amazing how suddenly GITMO was no longer the first level of Dante’s Hell.  
However, the many debacles of the Bush Administration including the handling of the Iraq War after the initial objectives had been achieved, the perception and reality of the “out of touchness” that the President had whether it was by not listening to then NSA Rice message to “Get back to DC NOW” or the realities and perceptions of the sluggishness of federal response to Katrina.  Throw in the perceptions of ABU and you get the picture.  Most reasonable people understand that the POTUS does not have a big say in economic trends.  They either benefit or take blame from the markets, but what Presidents can do is frame perspective.  Whether or not the latter is Mr. Bush’s fault – although many have viewed him as a “lame duck” since ’06, the people’s loss of confidence in the outgoing administration was in many ways deserved.  Sen. McCain had to fight against a skilled opponent and his own Party’s brand label.  Even Sen. Obama wouldn’t have been able to overcome those factors.

Summary:  All of this is prologue.  The interesting part to watch will be to see how Mr. Obama governs as President Obama.  If a President Obama is able to do as well as he did with the first three points in his administration it will likely enjoy success and populrity.  However, he won’t have George Bush to kick around after the first few months.  The onus will be on him and Congress to truly bring about policies that unite America.

I also believe he will shift back towards the left from the smaller moves he had made to the Center.  In many ways he should if you believe as I do he had a mandate.  The media and the Dems were correctly criticial of the Bush Administration – particularly from ’00 to 06 in not being inclusive.  I have a feeling the same will happen, and in some ways that troubles me as I am more Centrist than either the Bush or forthcoming Administration will be.

While I don’t believe he will make the US a “Socialist” country, I would be shocked if policies that favor Big Government a la New Deal and Great Society are not reintroduced.  There are other concerns that are shared.  Mr. Obama’s declaration of a “Civilian Defense and Security Force” equal in footing and funding to the US military is as vague as it is troubling.   I also think that this administration will be as partisan as President Bush’s was partisan, as President Clinton’s was partisan.  

Some things won’t change.  That is something you truly can believe in.

Quote of the Day

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
Alvin Toffler

Three Reasons I Say, “Thank God this Thing is Over”!

Two days after the general election. A new President. So many things to contemplate, and all I can say is “Thank God it’s over.”

In this post I will now give you my top three reasons why I am gleeful that this election season is over.

1 – I can have a conversation with my wife and not see her and her see me as a political enemy. I mentioned this to her the other day and she looked greatly offended. I also have to question why I felt that way, but suffice it to say I know I did. My wife and I are very different people who have world views which are antithetical to each other. She has often used the analogy that our relationship was similar to the Celt mythos of the Christian king of old marrying the “daughter of the tribe”. I bet you know which side of the political fence she is on from that statement alone. In most cases this causes our ideas to be encountered and our world view has an impact on the other in that a new view is formed. A synthesis of ideas occurs, with levels of respect borne from each others thesis. I know you philosophers out there are seeing the Hegellian Dialect at play.

2 – I don’t have to defend George W. Bush anymore to anyone or to myself. In many ways I still kinda like W, although I really am finding it pretty hard to find myself in agreement with many of the things he has done. I don’t know if that is just good old hard core political loyalty, or perhaps I do see something there. More than likely it is that I hate Monday morning quarterbacks, and since I was in the 45% in ’00 and the 50.6% in ’04 that voted for him, and that at the time based on what I was told, I supported the Iraq War as did most Americans, and in principle I like a lot about NCLB, and that in principle – which caused a lot of ruckus, I saw a lot to like about his immigration reform proposal, I figured it would be churlish to kick him while he was down. However, in all honesty I’m tired of offering apologetics for the POTUS. I’m tired of being made to feel that I am stupid, even though I have an IQ of 140, because I still support the guy. I’m glad he’s gone, and that history will be the evaluator of his time in office. I’ll also likely be dead if he has a Harry Truman repeat of history, and in the rear view mirror of fifty years is seen as a damned fine President. Then again, 96 isn’t impossible. Time to lose weight and do more exercise, and if history doesn’t bear this theory out, I’ll have the benefit of being a greater burden on my grandchildren.

3 – The country can reunite – even if my guy lost. I have a hunch that there will be some changes, and probably I won’t like them all. That is the reason why we have elections. I also don’t think that this will become Stalinist Russia with all the drabbery in between. One of the worst scenarios imaginable would have been a 269 to 269 tie with Congress deciding the POTUS. True, the evil part of my nature which would have revelled in the national hysteria would have been amused. It also would have been historic, and if President Elect Obama had emerged through the process as POTUS so much the better I suppose if you like more history. However, one historical first will be good enough. I am sure there will be a healthy debate about things in the near future. I also believe that while one can run a campaign on ideology, governance requires a bit more cooperation. It has been said that democracy is the government of the half-loaf. I think that some on the polar extremes may have less cause for fear and rejoicing than they may have thought this past Tuesday. Then again, I could be wrong.

Quote of the Day

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
– Henry David Thoreau, 1817 – 1862

Dedicated to my 57,000,000 fellow citizens. Along with best wishes (sincere ones) to our new President-Elect Obama. (Read yesterday’s post), who is now my President.

The Immigration Bill – The Good the Bad and The Ugly

Well after looking over this bill over I think that my initial reaction is pretty well stated, there is a great amount of moaning, wailing, and gnashing of teeth over this bill and the “amnesty” that it offers.  However, as I first thought when reading about this last night, there is plenty in this bill for both sides of the immigration fence, full pun intended, to be upset about, and in a rather devil’s advocate way, since I am not hard core on either side, I have to confess a bit of concern over the hysteria, on the GOP side, and a good deal of humor about the threats of never voting GOP again.  For those who hold that position, fine, do it, and enjoy an even larger DNC run of the Senate, House, and President.  You can kiss your “strict constructionist” goodbye, because if you think that “President Hillary or Barack or Johnny Boy will have the types of judges you prefer, you know the ones that keep Roe v Wade among other ideas valued by the base, but hey, you’ll have made your point known.

In actuality the “best” chance for this bill to not be passed is by the Pelosi led House, which finds it a step in the right – and I know she didn’t mean ideologically – direction.  That’s codespeak for softening what is actually very good in this bill, increasing what is bad, changing the order of operations in this bill’s equation, and then ramming down immigration reform DNC style after the GOP has lost the 08 elections with the aforementioned unholy trinity of candidates waiting in the wings.  Those on the hard right side of the GOP should take notice of that, because if this bill is allowed to fragment the GOP into three or four camps don’t think that the parts of this bill which are good will be kept, and rest assured that the parts of the bill that are unacceptable are going to be greatly enhanced and there will be lots of pork to go around.

The part of this bill which is good is that it offers decent proposals with regard to border security.  The fence is a nice idea, but unless you have lots of patrols, those fences are pretty easy to go over through or under – I’ve seen it done.  The doubling of the border agents is better, and hopefully the NG will be called in for more of a supprting role as had been proposed earlier.  The best part of the bill is the ID system, and if this is enforced it will greatly help ease concerns about terrorism and about illegals entering amok as they do now.  The most important part is it also allows, if enforced, to make sure those here legally don’t overstay their welcome, which is a huge cause of the current 12 million who call the US their illegal home away from home.

The bad would be the enforcement of this bill, and someone prematurely shooting the trigger.  If that happens, this will be 1986 all over again, and worse.  Enforcement will be the key, but the rub is that the current laws aren’t very well enforced.  Maybe the country has awoken, but I’m not holding my breath.

With regard to the “amnesty”, the plan is not unacceptable.  It does offer a path to citizenship but that is 13 years down the road.  What it does provide is that those here, and unless someone wants to cut out all aid and totally rewrite the laws concerning the way these people get aid, or deport the 12 million, and none of those are going to happen, it is likely the best plan that could be cobbled together and make a compromise.

The problem with the GOP base – or certain elements – since I am a lifelong Republican and am not ready to spit upon this bill, nor tear up my GOP Member card – is that they forgot that governance require compromise.  Perhaps if the last Congress had been a bit better at that uniquely democratic feature of our Republic they would be in the majority in at least the Senate.  However, ideologues are forever tied to the Four legs good, Two legs bad mantra.  So, the threats of leaving the Party en masse, and the way off the farm comments about some states trying to secede, I thought that was settled as treason, some love of America there!

The Good: Provides for some reasonable security measures and border control.  Also, sets out a reasonable path to normalization without being an amnesty, look up the word.  It will take 13 years to become a citizen, and will hopefully encourage many to enter legally where they can be monitored, pay taxes and all that good stuff.  The ID program is a strong part of this plan, and is laudable.

The Bad: The path to citizenship or the Z Visa is in effect a Green Card, this doesn’t bother me so much, but that is a bit of an odd inclusion to make one level of Visa which leads to a Green Card just like the card.  Enforcement of this will be tough, and I am not sold that the fence will work overly efficiently.

The Ugly: If enforcement doesn’t work well, and the performance of the last comprehensive immigration reform makes me leary, the situation will be much worse, and again I have little confidence in the ability or the will of this nation to enforce immigration policy laws.

Senate Bill to Defund Fails – Backed By DEM POTUS Candidates

From the AP.

WASHINGTON — Anti-war Democrats in the Senate failed in an attempt to cut off funds for the Iraq war on Wednesday, a lopsided bipartisan vote that masked growing impatience within both political parties over President Bush’s handling of the four-year conflict.

Don’t you love it when news reports editorialze. Make up your mind if you want to report or offer commentary!

The 67-29 vote against the measure left it far short of the 60 needed to advance. More than half the Senate’s Democrats supported the move, exposing divisions within the party but also marking a growth in anti-war sentiment from last summer, when only a dozen members of the rank and file backed a troop withdrawal deadline.

“It was considered absolute heresy four months ago” to stop the war, said Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, author of the measure to cut off funds for most military operations after March 31, 2008.

While there is a rise in the sentiment towards defunding and withdrawl, it seems that the Democratic Congress and Senate are still torn in two between a growing shift towards the hard left of their base, which is for immediate withdrawl “by any means necessary” and those who seem to have managed to have kept some level of sanity and understand that an immediate withdrawl would be a disaster of the highest order for the United States from a policy standpoint within the region, as well as for Iraq in its struggle to come to some semblance of order.

Ironically, the vote also cleared the way for the Democratic-controlled Congress to bow to Bush’s wishes and approve a war funding bill next week stripped of the type of restrictions that drew his veto earlier this spring.

If this does develop, it will be a fairly large political victory for the Administration. While the sentiment against a prolonged stay in Iraq is strong and rising, at the end of the day – or at the end of the Bush Presidency – it is still very likely that the United States will have troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Once the US invaded, it owned the problems of this country, and it there is no reason to believe that just as there are troops in Kosovo, South Korea, and Germany long after our military engagement ended, the same, for better or worse, is true about Iraq.

Democrats vowed in January to force an end to the war, and nowhere is the shift in sentiment more evident than among the party’s presidential contenders in the Senate.

For the first time, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, Barack Obama of Illinois and Joe Biden of Delaware joined Sen. Chris Dodd in lending support to the notion of setting a date to end U.S. participation in the war.

Clinton, the Democrats’ presidential front-runner in most early polls, has adamantly opposed setting a date for a troop withdrawal, and she gave conflicting answers during the day when asked whether her vote signified support for a cutoff in funds.

“I’m not going to speculate on what I’ll be voting on in the future,” she said at midday. But a few hours later she said: “I support the … bill. That’s what this vote … was all about.”

This is a rather signficant development. All of the major contenders for the Democratic nod are now lined up four square in the anti-war posture of the base. For Senator Clinton, who for the most part has split her votes with and against the Administration it seems that her shift towards the left is to guard against a double flank movement by Sen. Obama and former Sen. Edwards. One thing is for certain, this vote will help her with the base, but may hurt her in the general election. While the base is all for getting out – NOW – the rest of the country wants to get out, and to do so by defunding the troops may not sell well with Blue Dog Democrats.

Newsweek Poll – Bush Approval at 28% – Dem Candidates Trounce GOP

Results from the Newsweek Poll:

May 5, 2007 – It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. But According to the new NEWSWEEK Poll, the public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. The last president to be this unpopular was Jimmy Carter who also scored a 28 percent approval in 1979.

The poll goes on to show all Democratic candidates with fairly good leads over all combinations of GOP candidates, which is quite contradictory to all of the other polls being let out over the past few weeks. Another startling number was 71% of those polled felt the country was going down the wrong track. If all of these things are true, it would seem that the blue tide that came over the country in November was just a bit of undertow compared to a tsunami brewing in ’08. That may not be the case.

The mystery of polling is never to be discerned in the raw numbers, the factors that make up a poll are the way questions are framed, and who was asked the questions. The latter is always the most important, and this poll, registered Democrats composed nearly 50% more of the field than registered Republicans. While the Democrats do enjoy a slightly higher registration than Republicans, it is not a 50% majority.

Democrats were 36%
Republicans were 24%
Independents were 37%
Others/not interested were 3%

The polls sample was horrifically skewed. The poll also failed to expose demographics by age, gender or racial affiliation.

I’m not saying this poll is good news for the GOP, and anyone who has eyes which are open knows this, but this poll, is one of the worst constructed polls I have ever seen, and I’ve seen more than a few.

Rasmussen has been conducting tracking polls for years on daily approval, and Bush’s approval comes in between 37-40% the past week, which is a signficant difference. By the way, Rasmussen was very close on ’00 and hit ’04 and even the midterms dead on. He’s simply the best pollster out there, and his numbers show GOP candidates much closer than Newsweek’s poll.

This poll seems made for the MSM, particularly MSNBC. Now, I try not to complain too much about MSNBC’s bias, but remember Chris Matthews (former Carter Speechwriter, former Tip O’Neil aide, former Muskie and Moss aide) and Tim Russert (former aide to Mario Cuomo, and Sen. Moynihan – whom I happen to admire) bring a wee bit bias into their presentations. Newsweek’s editor, Howard Fineman is a regular contributor to their shows, as well as Kieth Olberman.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say that MSNBC is doing all the can to act as the Democratic Press Release Committee – but I guess that they would say the same thing about Fox.

🙂

Pro Life, Pro Choice: Symbol Over Substance

One of the more controversial instances in a rather ho hum “debate”, which was really trying to squeeze talking points between questions that sometimes lacked great meaning, may have been former NYC Mayor and front runner, Rudy Giuliani hedging a pro-choice political position in a very pro-life atmosphere. Did the former mayor handle the matter deftly, the consensus seems to be probably not, but was his answer the wrong answer is another issue entirely.

The GOP has made it a point to put a pro-life face on the party since Ronald Reagan’s stance in 1976. This was used to contrast against GOP apparatus candidate the then unelected, President Ford. Reagan’s bold campaign, which did benefit slightly from the pro-life movement’s involvement in his campaign. By 1980, the pro-life movement was a force in the GOP and played a role in Ronald Reagan, who had governed California with policies which were anything but “pro-life”, but publicly stated the lingo that the movement wanted to hear, and propelled the issue to prominence within the party. Pitted against this, oh Lord forgive me for invoking this with the name of Reagan with this term, flip-flop, George Bush who was not as ardently pro-life, but had never cast a pro-abortion rights vote or signed pro-abortion rights legislation, was seen as “soft” on the issue, simply because he didn’t run it up a flagpole, and inferred there was room for reasonable disagreement.

Now while I don’t doubt that President Reagan may indeed have had a turning moment in his life, and I would argue that Mit Romney deserves the same benefit of the doubt, the actual impact of his support of the pro-life agenda – and that is not inherently a perjurative, since “everyone” has an agenda – was little of substance and a lot on symbol. You have to hand it to President Reagan, he knew how to get mileage on an issue, and nobody expected him to come out of California, home of the most progressive abortion rights laws, many signed by him, and overturn Roe v Wade. Talking the talk was enough, and has remained so for the past 27 years. This is not to say that the sincerity of GOP candidate’s opposition to abortion on demand is disingenuous, it is to say that despite their sincerity and placing it as a bona fides to be a “true Republican”, very little has been accomplished towards ending this practice despite it being a rallying cry for the political party that has held the executive office for nearly 20 of the past 28 years, and has had control of Congress for approximately 12 of those years. Simply put, there appears to be a lack of political will to push the symbol into substance.

One can look to the steps that have been made towards restricting or to at least stemming the tide of abortions taking place, although they still run about one million or more a year. Although the raw numbers are going up, the percentage rates seem to be decreasing, partly because of shifts in public sentiment towards unwed mothers raising children. However, abortion remains a relatively common practice in the nation, and despite gains such as the Hyde Amendment – which is very good legislation from the pro-life vantage point, and the recent SCOTUS affirming of a ban on partial birth abortions, which is the epitome of symbol over substance when one considers the miniscule numbers of abortions performed in this admittedly disturbing manner, and even the wrapping of nine of the GOP candidates firmly in the mantle of symbolicly being pro-life there is little to hope that much substance will be reaped from this act.

Which leads us to Roe v Wade, or the decision that fires the hearts of the pro-life movement much in the same way that the number 666 makes a old fashioned tent revival preacher tone up the occilation in his voice with the mandatory appearance of veins bulging from the neck. The real point is that Roe v Wade is symbol, and not really much in substance. If the decision is overturned, and the best path for the pro-life advocates is via the judiciary making decisions pushed forward by state legislatures which will take away the reach of the law, there is no reason to believe that abortion will be outlawed in the vast majority of states, nor that the number of abortions performed in the nation will go down in a drastic manner. Just as Roe v Wade served as a symbol for the women’s movement, rather than giving much substantive relief, as abortion was readily available in most areas, its overturning will be a symbol without much substance. If this issue were cereal, it would have snap and crackle, but lack pop.

So what is the big deal about having the pro-life mantle and wearing it proudly? What is so heretical about saying, as Rudy Giuliani did last night, that this is a highly personal decision that is ultimately up to the woman? If a woman wants to end a pregnancy, she will do so. Should the state make it easy by funding her desire, well the law says no, however, should the state governments “put obstacles” in the path in the exercise of this decision, would be fully in line with Federalism. However, the role of the Federal government advancing or putting up obstacles remains the area that will likely be debated. Perhaps this is just the instance the the 9th Amendment was framed, let the states fight it out, and keep it out of the pervue of the Feds. Although it is the “dream of dreams” that abortion will be nationally outlawed by the of the pro-life movement, and conversely the “sum of all fears” of the pro-abortion rights crowd, both sides need to face reality, that like it or not, abortion is a reality and an option that whether Federally deemed as woman’s right, or given protection by the states, is likely to remain among us. It would also be the reciprocal of a bad decision that allowed Roe v Wade, and if you understand math reciprocals have the exact qualities of their counterpart. It would likely be just as bad from a Constitutional framework as the 1973 decision.

A reasonable position is that probably both poles don’t have a monopoly on the truth. To assert this position as a human right, although it is the law, is hard to imagine to be the intent of the framers of the Constitution, but rest assured, women were having abortions, lots of them in colonial days. They just didn’t get Federal funds for it, nor have Congress stopping production of whatever plant women used in a “tea” to end an unwanted child, and this disinterest is likely the best position. Funny how the middle of the road, although hated by the poles, is where the vast majority of the public, and in this case,  Constitutional ground.

Where You Stand Politically

So, you want to  know where you stand and how you can get that cool little icon like I have on my blog?

Well, just go to this site and take the quiz.  I would put no opinion if you are not sure about something.

Please post your results, and you get BIG TIME BONUS POINTS for reasonableness if you score Moderate, Conservative or Liberal!  I “hope” I have constructed a place where divergent views are allowed and where we gain from seeing each other’s perspective.  I also hope that sometimes someone will say, I see your point, or something like that.

So often politics are too personal, so maybe this would at least bring back agreeable discussion and dissent to the forefront.

I’m posting this on all topics to hopefully get maximum participation.

IF you wish to take the quiz it is here.

Thanks!

House Fails to Overide Bush Veto – Both Sides Show Signs of Compromise

As expected the House failed to overide the Presidential veto of its bill linking war funding to a timetable for troop withdrawl.

Minutes later, in a previously scheduled meeting, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders discussed the standoff with President Bush at the White House, pledging at least to try to forge a compromise.

“We made our position clear. He made his position clear,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters after the meeting with the president. “Now, it is time for us to try to work together, to come together.”

“But make no mistake,” she said, signaling a very tough road ahead, “Democrats are committed to ending this war.”

Of course they did, they have to compromise. Even if this is to their own ruin with the more polarizing (we shall be restrained and not use radical) elements of the Democratic Caucas, the leadership and what remains of the semi-centrist Democratic Party realizes that with its majority status comes responsibility to participate in governance. Welcome to the reality. What is more concerning to the DNC is that their caucas may show signs of weakening already as seven Representatives broke from the Party while only two GOP Representatives joined Democrats.

“Yesterday was a day that highlighted differences. Today is a day where we can work together to find common ground,” Bush said. “I will inform the speaker and the leader of our serious intent.”

Bush then named his chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, national security adviser Stephen Hadley and budget director Rob Portman to work out a compromise with congressional leaders.

Bolten plans to meet with Senate leaders on Thursday. Other meetings with House leaders are also being planned.

Portman, a former Ohio congressman, already has been talking privately with House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.).

Obey has floated a few alternative proposals, including a quick vote on an Iraq funding bill with benchmarks but no withdrawal timeline. He has suggested holding a separate vote on a U.S. pullout after a new funding bill is enacted, a move that would help Pelosi and Reid reassure anti-war lawmakers that their concerns over ongoing military conflict in Iraq are being heard.

The benchmarks along with future votes for pulling out totally are the most likely outcome. Benchmarks in themselves are a reasonable compromise that the Administration and most GOP lawmakers could abide with. The Administration has also stated at times that benchmarks be a part of the process, so this is nothing new, and this would allow both sides to claim a victory of sorts, The Administration and GOP Caucas could say that they held their ground and the Dem Caucas saying they are holding the Administration and Iraq accountable.

The only group which would be left out, would be the harder anti-war left. However, that is the Democratic base, and will likely create a severe case of infighting in their own party.

Governance is a bitch.