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What Obama Should Learn From Lenin

/ Wrote: Sep 05, 2010 10:01 PM
“They get it. There’s panic. There’s concern,” VandeHei said. “The reality for this administration stinks, politically and practically, when it comes to the economy. You’re not going to be able to change that 9.6-percent unemployment figure. You can’t get anything from Congress in the next couple of months.”… Smith asked his guests to try to identify the source of the discontent: “From your experience on the Hill, have you heard any Democrats in private conversations say, ‘You know what? We went down the wrong road. We went after health care. We went after so many other things on the Obama agenda as opposed to, in the end of the day, it’s all about creating jobs?’” “Not only have we heard that, but we’ve been hearing it for months,”...

Thirty-eight years ago a film called The Candidate was playing in theaters around the country. It told the story of a young politician named Bill McKay (played by Robert Redford) and his quixotic campaign to win a seat in the United States Senate from California. That, of course, was the year of George McGovern’s run for the presidency against President Richard Nixon. It was also the first year 18-year old Americans could vote. So the movie tapped into the whole young-rock-star-charisma-change-the-world zeitgeist.

It was a “Yes, we can” political prologue.

In the final scene of the movie, McKay and...

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