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The Daily Dish - 2006-2011 archives for The Daily Dish, featuring Andrew Sullivan

The Closer

By The Daily Dish
Mar 9 2010, 10:54 AM ET

A reader writes:

I was watching the “Fired Up” clip you posted this morning and something occurred to me regarding the President; what people seem to fail to grasp, and what Obama does, is that the President is not a legislator.  He is, to borrow a baseball term, “The Closer.”  I think people are having trouble figuring this out because, for the first time in decades, we have a career legislator as the executive. 



Since Nixon, it’s been governors or vice presidents, people ingrained with the authoritative executive.  Obama is bringing back the separation of powers, letting legislators legislate, and for most people, they’ve never been alive to see a President act with this sort of deference and constitutional understanding (it probably doesn't hurt that he was a Constitutional Law professor either).  What he’s doing now is what a President should do.  He let the legislative process largely play out, now’s the time for the President to advocate and make sure it gets done.  It’s the bottom of the 9th, and the Closer is coming in.

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