Sandwiched in between last Tuesday night's smashing victory for Republicans in Massachusetts and President Obama's State of the Union address this Wednesday night, were the Sunday morning public affairs shows, which featured members of the Obama administration maintaining that the President will not reset his agenda, despite increasing calls from Republicans and some Democrats (and a shitload of pundits) that he do so.
On ABC's This Week (guest hosted by Terry Moran), top political strategist David Axelrod was undeterred by Moran brandishing a copy of the new Newsweek, which features on the cover a picture of Obama with the heading "The Inspiration Gap." Axelrod said the only regrets in the eight month discussion on trying to get a health care bill passed was one of "process," saying:
But process, eight months of debate, were less than satisfying. And that was clear. And if you look at the polls out of Massachusetts, people reacted as much to the process as anything else. Were there things we could have done there? Perhaps. We have to think that through.
But this president's never going to stop fighting to create jobs, to raise incomes, and to push back on the special interests' dominance in Washington and this withering partisanship that keeps us from solving problems.
And Axelrod, as well as Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Fox News Sunday and Advisor Valerie Jarrett on Meet The Press, all were taking solace in a Washington Post poll taken over the weekend that they insisted showed the Massachusetts vote for Scott Brown as not a repudiation of their health care reform proposals.
This article appears in Jan 20-26, 2010.