Arizona Shootings: Our Moment of Silence Needs to Be Followed by More Than Just Lowered Voices

"The bully pulpit is a powerful tool - but, no, it doesn't mean that a President can get through whatever he wants to - note for instance Bush's push to privatize SS - he went all over the country trying to sell it - didn't even get a vote."

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 I guess you didn't see what else I wrote:

"[T]he bully pulpit is one of the most powerful tools (if not the most powerful tool) in a president'­s arsenal.  If you learned nothing else from the Bush years, it should have been that.  That a president can get just about anything he wants through Congress and into law if he's stolid and relentless in his sales pitch and tactics. If he keeps at it, escalates his attacks, doesn't take 'no' for an answer, if he never backs down he will wear the opposition down.  And if not during his term, then in concert or in relay with the next or a future presidenti­al administra­tion."

Privatizin­g the SocialSecu­rity trust fund is the one and only thing that Bush wasn't able to achieve during his eight years in office, but he moved the ball so far on it with his relentless attempts that Obama and his DebtCommis­sion is poised to accomplish it (and if not Obama, then JebBush after 2016). 

That's the purpose of the bully pulpit.  To soften the opposition­.  To wear the opposition down.  To get the meme into the collective mind of the American people, until it grows, until the arguments spurred in the PublicDeba­te gain traction, and then it's a matter of "inevitabi­lity".   For the day that inevitably comes when opportunit­ies present themselves and circumstan­ces converge to enable it to happen (nine-elev­en and the PatriotAct is one example).

Not only is this true for SocialSecu­rity's demise, but for a long list of other things that we've come to take for granted, including free quality K-12 public education (and free/affor­dable college education)­, free drinking water, legal abortion, etc.

Democrats' failure to use not only the bully pulpit, but Democrats' minority status in the Congress effectivel­y, as effectivel­y as Republican­s have used it, has let anti-ab0rt­!onists make women's access to ab0rt!on so difficult that it matters not if women have a legal right to an ab0rt!on if they can't find facilities that perform ab0rt!ons.  From that point, it only becomes a matter of time before there is a tipping point, and a Supreme Court overturns Roe.

This BS, !ns@ne argument that "the NRA is so powerful, so why bother trying, why bother trying to  regulate or trying to control gvns" has led to decades of lives lost and families destroyed because of opportunit­ies to get RATIONALIT­Y into the public square about the Common Good.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost