When Republican stalwart Bill Kristol calls what GOP leaders are doing "silly," that gets my attention. Kristol is a rare beacon of intellectualism in a party intent on embracing its lowest common denominator, and he rightfully criticized House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor for setting "preconditions" before they would meet with President Obama at a White House summit to discuss health-care reform. Boehner and Cantor sent a letter to the president suggesting they might not attend the event unless Obama and the Democrats set aside their health-care bill and agreed to start over, a precondition no more likely to be met than demands made by Israel or the Palestinians as a prelude to peace talks.
The Boehner-Cantor letter was seen for what it was, a delaying tactic and a show of pettiness that was quickly condemned by Kristol and others, and that Senate leader Mitch McConnell, a craftier politician, did not embrace. Opposing the president is one thing, but disrespecting him—and the office—by rebuffing an invitation to meet with him does not sit well with the voters. The GOP duo backed down, perhaps prodded by Kristol and others who remember a sequence of events in 1995 when House Speaker Newt Gingrich, locked in a budget battle with President Clinton, complained to reporters that Clinton had ignored him on the flight aboard Air Force One to attend the slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin's funeral.
Gingrich expected their budget negotiations would continue aboard the plane, but instead Clinton spent the time playing hearts with aides. And what's more, Gingrich and Republican leader Bob Dole were made to exit from the rear of the plane instead of from the first-class cabin. The reaction to his rant was swift and merciless. He looked petty and whiny, an impression that was captured on the front page of the New York Daily News with a caricature of Gingrich in diapers with a bottle, throwing a temper tantrum. The headline read: "Crybaby: He Shut Down the Government Because Clinton Made Him Sit in the Back of the Plane." When you get an invitation from the White House, you go, or you accept the consequences.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
