Obama and his staff have had enough. Say good-bye to Mr. Nice Guy:After brushing aside criticism during the presidential campaign that they tried to keep candidate Barack Obama too far above the fray — and with memories of the abundance of media coverage during the Clinton years — administration officials are accelerating their efforts to anticipate and respond to the most sharp-edged charges.
They’re starting with pushback on the “czars” nonsense. Their strategy:
The White House officials are eager to avoid the perception that the president is directly engaging critics who appear to speak only for a vocal minority, and part of their strategy involves pushing material to liberal and progressive media outlets to steer the coverage in their direction, senior advisers said.
Make no mistake; those wacky right-wingers are intellectual bullies. Which reminds me: have you seen this video yet?
This is what you do with bullies when they are not deterred by “conflict resolution” techniques: face them, call out their behavior, stand your ground (while not inviting combat), and wait for them to work up enough courage to attack. Then give up ground until they come unbalanced, at which point…put them down.
But here’s the most important step: once the bully is down, complete your dominance and their humiliation before turning your back on them. Not because it’s cinematic, but because it’s effective. My observation has been that most bullies abandon violence after a judiciously-applied Alabama ass-whoopin’.
