Go Big AND Small, Mr. President

Zandar has good advice for President Obama.

There are two schools of thought on what President Obama should do for his jobs program announcement next month: One, that he should announce a major new jobs initiative to help the millions of long-term unemployed and dare the GOP to block it (and they will and nobody will receive any help at all), or two, that he should announce a smaller program though the aegis of the executive branch. The GOP will attack the President anyway and call the measure a failure, but some people will get some help.

SNIP

But couldn't the President do both, then? Immediately enact executive branch measures through the departments of Labor and Commerce to help the country and push for a new PWA? That I think would be much more effective in the short and long term. A combination of both approaches is what is needed, because if there's anything Robinson and I agree on, it's that any jobs proposal taken before Congress will be blocked by the Republicans, period, end of line.

In that respect, anything that President Obama does propose to put forth in front of Capitol Hill must be a doozy, Robinson is right on that.

Liberals remember 1935, when repugs were attacking FDR on his multiple and varying attacks on 25 percent unemployment, even though most of those programs had started to work. Liberals remember that FDR's mantra was "try something. If it doesn't work, trying something else. But above all, try something."

And the next year he was re-elected in a historic landslide.