dan balz

When Barack Obama was considering running for president in 2006, the political strategist who had engineered his Senate victory two years earlier bluntly stated a potentially fatal concern. "I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch," David Axelrod wrote Obama. Then and now, that's the question: When the going gets rough, as it did in the campaign and has many times over the first seven-plus months of his presidency, does Obama flinch or fight.

I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch   -David Axelrod

 

The rush by authors to cash in on the Obama brand was both predictable and inevitable; just as foreseeable is the general worthlessness of most of the post-election tomes purporting to reveal something new about the president. The 2008 election, imbued as it was with history and merchandising opportunities, has been an irresistible, shining bug-zapper to authors ranging from the friendly (Richard Wolffe's Renegade: The Making of a President ) to the hyperbolically hostile (Michelle Malkin's Culture of Corr  

When Barack Obama was considering running for president in 2006, the political strategist who had engineered his Senate victory two years earlier bluntly stated a potentially fatal concern. "I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch," David Axelrod wrote Obama. Then and now, that's the question: When the going gets rough, as it did in the campaign and has many times over the first seven-plus months of his presidency, does Obama flinch or fight.

I don’t know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch   -David Axelrod

 

Books by conservative authors and pundits continue to dominate the top of our list. This month, "Culture Of Corruption" by Michelle Malkin moves to No. 1, while "Liberty And Tyranny" by Mark R. Levin falls to No. 3. But Kennedy books are fast shifting into view, even though the memoir of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, "True Compass," has yet to hit the shelves.  

The 111th Congress returns from its summer recess on Sept. 8 with plenty of work to do, but with little confidence from the American people in their ability to do it. Indeed, according to the Real Clear Politics polling average covering most of the month of August, only 29 percent of those polled approve of the job Congress is doing. A whopping 59.7 percent of respondents, on average, disapprove of their work.  

After an August recess that saw Democrats take a beating on their message and calls from lawmakers to provide more leadership, President Obama is likely to change course on his approach to health reform legislation. The New York Times : "Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with advisers including Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and David Axelrod, a senior strategist, to prepare for Congress's return to work next week after a month in which many lawmakers have been spooked by contentious townhall meeti

If you're sitting at a table negotiating in good faith, then you probably don't send out mailers saying, 'Help me stop Obama-care.' That's just common sense   -David Axelrod

 

In today's Washington Post, Dan Balz makes the case that August was a disaster for the Obama administration and health care reform. I believed that before I read Balz's column--in fact, there can't be anybody who follows politics who doesn't believe August was terrible for the Democrats. But Balz's column paradoxically made me think that perhaps we all had it wrong.

The cause of bipartisanship moved into reverse during August, though not because of anything Obama did or didn't do. In this case, two Republicans who the administration had hoped could be leaders in helping to work out a bipartisan bill [Chuck Grassley and Mike Enzi] unexpectedly turned harshly partisan in their rhetoric.   -Dan Balz

 

"Faced with falling approval ratings and increasingly impatient with Senate negotiations, Obama is considering a speech in the next week or so in which he would be "more prescriptive" about what he feels Congress must include in a health bill, top adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday in an interview," the AP writes. "The speech might occur before the Sept. 15 deadline the White House gave Senate negotiators to seek a bipartisan bill, Axelrod said. He suggested that two key Republicans have not bargained in g