Congress Reasserting Itself At Obama's Expense

I have mixed feelings about this, but overall it's a good thing to see Congress reassert its role as a check on the president's power.

For the past eight years, under the Bush Administration, Congress bowed to the "war-time President" under the false premise that dissent was equivalent to disloyalty.

As a result, we have gone to war unwisely and spent trillions of dollars we could really use now--and in fact one could argue that we may not be in the current straits were it not for a feckless and ineffective White House.

Congress should never abnegate its responsibilities again.

Which brings me to Warren Buffet's recent remarks, to the effect that both democrats and republicans should stand behind Obama. There is nothing a-political or post-partisan about budgets.

I think Obama has been misunderstood when he talks about post-partisanship. He doesn't mean a lack of disagreement or defined political principles.

What he means is an end to automatically disagreeing with someone because they belong to the opposing party. It means listening to arguments with an open mind and expecting to agree rather than not.

It won't be easy for Obama to accomplish this, but we elected him because we think he can be more effective than anyone else. Now it's up to him to define post-partisanship and to lead by example.

The fact that this won't happen overnight is proof that he's not "Barack the magic negro." But we didn't elect him for his magical powers. We elected him because he's good at what he does.

He's accomplished a great deal so far in his not-quite-2-month-old Administration, and unfortunately, we need a lot more from him. Congress isn't making it easy for him, and as much as part of me would like them to just roll over and obey him, I'm glad that they're not.