[Vision2020] Pres mans-up

[Glenn Schwaller]

>From the Huffington Post:

A chastened President Barack Obama signaled a willingness to
compromise with Republicans on tax cuts and energy policy Wednesday,
one day after his party lost control of the House and suffered deep
Senate losses in midterm elections.

Obama ruefully called the Republican victories "a shellacking" and
acknowledged that his own connection with the public had frayed.

At a White House news conference, the president said that when
Congress returns, "my goal is to make sure we don't have a huge spike
in taxes for middle class families." He made no mention of his
campaign-long insistence that tax cuts be permitted to expire on
upper-income families, a position he said would avoid swelling the
deficit but put him in conflict with Republicans.

He also virtually abandoned his legislation – hopelessly stalled in
the Senate – featuring economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions
from power plants, vehicles and other sources.

"I'm going to be looking for other means of addressing this problem,"
he said. "Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat," he
said, strongly implying there will be others.

In the campaign, Republicans slammed the bill as a "national energy
tax" and jobs killer, and numerous Democrats sought to emphasize their
opposition to the measure during their own re-election races.

The president opened his post-election news conference by saying
voters who felt frustrated by the sluggish pace of economic recovery
had dictated the Republican takeover in the House.

Asked to reflect on the returns, he said, "I feel bad," adding that
many Democrats who went down to defeat had done so knowing they risked
their careers to support his agenda of economic stimulus legislation
and a landmark health care bill. He blamed himself, in part.

"The relationship that I've had with the American people is one that
built slowly, peaked at this incredible high, and then during the
course of the last two years, as we've together gone through some very
difficult times, has gotten rockier and tougher," Obama said.