{"id":12824,"date":"2012-11-07T16:03:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T21:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=12824"},"modified":"2012-11-07T16:03:30","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T21:03:30","slug":"the-oscar-wilde-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/11\/07\/the-oscar-wilde-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Oscar Wilde Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The New York Times<\/em> published the opinion piece <a title=\"The New York Times blog article\" href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/11\/06\/e-day\/#Siegel\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>The Oscar Wilde Strategy<\/strong><\/a> by Lee Siegel.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Someone once said that upon reaching 60, you have two thoughts. The first is, \u201cThis is going to work out.\u201d The second is, \u201cThis is not going to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many of those who voted, as I did, for Barack Obama must have experienced a similar simultaneous sense of relief and despair last night, as jubilation gave way to the grim realization that the political paralysis of the past four years will become, if anything, worse and more bitter.<\/p>\n<p>It was startling to hear, on CNN, the assembled pundits almost unanimously agree that President Obama had to find the \u201cmiddle ground,\u201d move to \u201cthe center\u201d and \u201cbuild relationships\u201d with Republicans. Where have they been for four years? Mr. Obama had been trying desperately to find the political center for his entire first term, only to be stymied by Republicans trying to recapture the White House by rejecting his every attempt at compromise and then blaming him for being unwilling to compromise.<\/p>\n<p>What to do in such a situation, with the country split right down the middle, and a Republican opposition driven by a hardcore faction that believes the country has been stolen from them by treacherous and unpatriotic forces? There is only one thing to do: one half of the country must leave the other half behind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You really need to read the rest of the piece by following the <a title=\"The New York Times blog post\" href=\"http:\/\/campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/11\/06\/e-day\/#Siegel\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>link<\/strong><\/a> above.<\/p>\n<p>I thank JamesG for sending an email containing an extensive quote from the article.\u00a0 I wish I could post the whole thing here, but what is appropriate for a personal email is too long to be published on this blog without written permission from the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The New York Times published the opinion piece The Oscar Wilde Strategy by Lee Siegel. Someone once said that upon reaching 60, you have two thoughts. The first is, \u201cThis is going to work out.\u201d The second is, \u201cThis is not going to work out.\u201d Many of those who voted, as I did, for Barack [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12825,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12824\/revisions\/12825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}