Mohammad was not proverbially diminished when the mountain would not come to him and he therefor listed his hands and said that he would go to the mountain. No more is Obama diminished by going to the Republican Caucus. On the contrary, I really like that he did so. It has always been my opinion that being willing to take the conversation to your opponent's turf shows strength rather than weakness, and that it invites conversation rather than confrontation. Too often when Presidents have wanted to confer with Congress it has begun with a "summons to the White House." Such a move hardly constitutes an auspicious conversational opener.
Update: Saturday morning.
And it was really good stuff. Some of the Republican questions were nasty political theatre, and some were decent and rather thoughtful questions with legitimate challenges. On the latter he dissembled just a little on some of them, and quite a lot on a few, but provided some significant degree of honest "my bad" commentary. On the former, he called the bluff, and was not particularly subtle about it, using phrases like "that is just factually not true." It was a real debate, and he did not, to say the least, walk away with his tail between his legs.
There was much comment that him going to the Republicans made him look weak. All I can say to that is that the people making that claim did not watch his performance there. If that was him looking weak...
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