Obama: Time to pick a fight

A Boston Globe scribe put a gag headline atop a draft editorial on Jimmy Carter's latest economic proposals, little expecting it would turn up atop the ed page and help define the Carter presidency.

The headline, before it was yanked: "Mush from the Wimp."

Americans appreciate scrappers in their public life, and jettison those who talk of malaise and don't demonstrate what George Bush, Sr., called "the vision thing." A recent example: Two vertically challenged, targeted Democrats on the West Coast, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray, withstood this year's Republican tide largely on she-fights-for-us themes.

Harry Truman took a shellacking in the 1946 mid-term elections, but in 1948 won the greatest presidential upset in American history with a whistle-stop campaign in which he flayed the Republican-controlled "do nothing" 80th Congress.

O.K., he didn't have Barack Obama's ability to turn a phrase, but Truman spoke plainly and took no prisoners. Memorably, at the National Plowing competition, Truman accused the GOP Congress of sticking a pitchfork in the back of the American farmer.

President Obama needs to pick a fight to pick up his presidency. Last week, after adviser David Axelrod appeared to cave in on extending Bush tax cuts, the president's political base was tempted to put a new ending on a 2008 Obama slogan: "Fired Up and Ready to Leave."

Presidents don't always win: Still, as dailykos.com website proprietor Markos Moulitsas ceaselessly points out, riding to battle rouses the troops. Come up short? You lay the foundation to win next time. The U.S. Senate rejected Medicare in 1962: Prominent Medicare opponents lost their seats that fall.

Obama has two immediate opportunities. He could use executive authority to end the military's Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy that drives gays and lesbians out of the military. Let these people serve their country and do their jobs.

Don't wait for the courts, tell the Senate to move or you will move on over them. If Sen. John McCain raises a ruckus, invite his wife and daughter -- who support repeal -- as witnesses in the Oval Office when the order is signed.

Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy. Joel Connelly has been a staff columnist for more than 30 years. He comments regularly on politics and public policy.

Republicans, and the Washington, D.C., elite media, expect Obama to surrender and let Bush-era tax cuts stay in place -- including big breaks for the upper two percent of income earners. I even heard an MSNBC pundit suggest the upcoming fig-leaf explanation: It was the only way we could preserve the middle class tax cuts.

Tax cuts for the wealthy present the first eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between the White House and uncompromising Republicans who take control of Congress' lower house this January. Does Obama want to give them this impression: We can take this guy.

The Secret Service dubbed him Rawhide, and Ronald Reagan lived up to the title early in his presidency. The nation's air traffic controllers went on strike. Reagan fired all of them. The Gipper broke up and destroyed the one union that backed him for president in 1980.

The president's action made a big impression in an unexpected place -- the Kremlin. Soviet leaders saw in Reagan a willingness to act rutlessly and axe people who helped him to power: It was their own modus operandi. They respected the guy a lot more.

In the Northwest, our most effective politicians have picked fights that they could win.

Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman provoked a recall election by firefighters and City Light employees. He won decisively, paving the way to bring hitherto-autonomous fiefdoms under city hall control.

Oregon's green GOP Gov. Tom McCall confronted the Nixon administration over its plan to ship nerve gas from Okinawa to permanent storage near Umatilla. The plan was scrubbed after McCall raised a monumental stink. (The administration retaliated by letting Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington announce that the nerve gas wasn't coming.)

Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus set out in the 1970's to stop use of the Snake River as an open sewer: 23 industrial plants and two municipalities were dumping untreated sewage into the river.

He told potato king J.R. Simplot, a bigtime polluter, to install secondary treatment, adding: "You will do this or I will wait for low water, when the outflow pipes are exposed, and take a TV crew down there and personally put plugs in those pipes."

After a bit of jawboning, Simplot asked: "If you make me do it, will you give me your word that you will make all my competitors do as I do?" The two guys shook on it.

J.R. was no dummy. In keeping potato peelings out of the river, he built a low-pressure pipeline that was connected to a feedlot, where his cattle were fed a diet of spud leftovers. He improved the Snake River, and made a profit.

Such stories make the reputations of our best public officials. Biographers are still celebrating Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt -- and, yes, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington -- for decisiveness and galvanizing moments of eloquence.

Obama has always let people know he's the smartest guy in the room. The intelligent course now is to stop being detached and ride to the guns.

Our last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, won a second term when he eyeballed a Republican Congress and it shut down the government. Capitol Hill blinked, and the two sides started to do business.

The smartest guy in the room doesn't let Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michelle Bachmann and Sarah Palin set the national agenda.