Republicans pounce on Obama remark: ‘You can't change Washington from the inside'
He has not been able to change the ‘tone’ in Washington, Obama says, calling that ‘disappointing.’
President Obama — who ran his 2008 campaign on the promise of “hope and change” — made a surprising admission after four years in office on Thursday: “You can't change Washington from the inside.”
Republicans immediately pounced on the president's seemingly off-the-cuff remark, which came after Mitt Romney's campaign had endured days of attacks over the GOP candidate's own unscripted comments at a secretly-recorded May fundraiser.
“His slogan was ‘Yes we can,'” an energized Romney declared at a rally in Sarasota, Fla. “His slogan now is ‘No I can't!'”
Obama made the comment in response to a question about his “biggest failure” at a Univision town-hall forum in Miami on Thursday.
In a nod to the mostly-Latino audience, Obama first mentioned his inability to pass immigration reform, before admitting to the larger failing.
“Obviously, the fact that we haven't been able to change the tone in Washington is disappointing,” he said.
“And I think that I've learned some lessons over the last four years and the most important lesson I've learned is that you can't change Washington from the inside,” the president continued. “You can only change it from the outside.”
Phi Beta Iota: This is one of those special moments when a President feels able to tell the truth. What he does not say is that his appointments, beginning with Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and his complete abdication on the economy to the Wall Street -Federal Reserve insiders, were the price he had to pay for winning as he did. He was required to dismiss the broad spectrum that voted for him in full faith. Now he sees that Occupy was an opportunity lost — an opportunity that he could have embraced the way LBJ embraced MLK, going against the powers in being to take some major steps forward. Obama is now where Al Gore was in 2000 – he has received fair and full warning from Greg Palast about plans to steal the election in not just one state, but across many states. He has probably also received an offer from whoever replaced Warren Christopher in the Wall Street line-up. Here's the good news: All Obama has to do to win in November is embrace Occupy, embrace the Independents, and embrace the four national accredited parties now blocked from the ballot: Constitution, Green, Libertarian, and Reform. This November could be about organized people against organized money. An Electoral Reform Act of 2012 — and ideally a Smart Nation Act of 2012 — would destroy the ability of Republican obstructionists to further undermine the President, while bringing enough new blood into the Congress to achieve a fresh start.
See Also:
A DOCUMENTS
….1 International Election Integrity Principles
….2 Occupy NYC Working Group on Electoral Reform
….3 Election Integrity Pledge
….4 Electoral Reform Statement of Demand
B STRATEGY, METHODS, ORGANIZATIONS
….1 Richard Winger on Electoral Reform Short-Cut
….2 Campaign Finance: Amendment or Law?
….3 Americans Elect: Manchurian Fraud or Redeemable Good Idea?
….4 General Strike
….5 Directory of Activist Individuals & Organizations (USA)
Other Public Options at We the People Reform Coalition
