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Monday, May 21, 2012

Get Out Your Barf Bag Booker -- Obama Is Not Backing Down on Bain, And That's A Good Thing (UPDATED)



Here's My Transcript of the Key Moments:
Well, first of all, I think Cory Booker is an outstanding mayor, he's doing great work in Newark, and obviously helping to turn that city around... And I think it is important to recognize that this issue is not "a distraction," this is part of the debate we're going to be having in this election campaign about how do we create an economy where everybody, from top to bottom, folks on Wall Street and folks on Main Street, have a shot at success, and if they're working hard and they're acting responsibly, that they're able to live out the American dream... The reason why this is relevant to the campaign is my opponent, Governor Romney, his main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience. He's not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He's saying, I'm a business guy, and I know how to fix it, and this is his business. And when you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot. Your job is to think about those workers who get laid off, and how are we paying for their retraining. Your job is to think about how those communities can start creating new clusters so they can attract new businesses. Your job as president is to think about how do we set up an equitable tax system so that everybody's paying their fair share, that allows us then to invest in science, and technology, and infrastructure, all of which are going to help us grow. And so if your main argument for how to grow the economy is "I knew how to make a lot of money for investors," then you're missing what this job is about. It doesn't mean you weren't good at private equity. But that's not what my job is as president. My job is to take into account everybody, not just some. My job is to make sure the country is growing not just now, but 10 years from now, 20 years from now... This is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about.
This is good stuff. Contrary to some panicky Villagers out there, I think this is winning stuff, too. Rhetorically, this is better than the weekend address I read closely a few posts back.

UPDATE: Mayor Booker was on Rachel Maddow's show tonight responding to the brouhaha, and especially to the ugly opportunistic use to which he is being put by the GOP in the aftermath of his comments. His comments and the President's seem more reconciled at this point to me (as they definitely were not yesterday even in the context of the whole interview if you ask me, despite Booker's protests to the contrary). At his best, which Booker is not at at the moment, that's for sure, he is an inspirational politician who can still do more good as an active figure with some kind of future than as somebody whose rich donor hobnobbing got him out of touch and sunk his ship, surely, even if I think the "Meet the Press" interview revealed a real and really troubling romance with financial fraudsters that he needs to re-think and which his fans need to press him to re-think and which I find it frankly hard to believe the recession has not yet prompted him to re-think more thoroughly than he has done anyway (and he's not the only one). I will say he took a higher road tonight than I have done (as witness the title of this blog-post), and he seemed a bit panicked in the spotlight, which suggests he has sense. Fine, I guess, we should move on and let the Republicans keep on howling without joining in on their terms.

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