So a side hobby of mine is trying to figure out what this President Obama guy is up to politically.  I might be proven wrong, but I have a strange sense about this president’ political skills, backed up with very little empirical evidence (health care notwihtstanding).  These is something unique and mercurial about his political style than I think is an outlier in studying trends in American politics.  Maybe it’s his mixed-race, multicutlral background or his age or his intellect, maybe it was David Plouffe, amybe it was the Internet but I have a sense that this fall isn’t going to go as my political science brain tells me it should, with big off year gains for the Republicans.  So I’ll go out on a limb and say that the Dems lose fewer than 10 seats in the House this fall. 

All I’m saying is, anybody who can reference a song which contain lyrics that say “If you’re feeling like a pimp, …go on brush your shoulders off” and make it work is playing a different game than the rest of Washington.

The problematic lyrics notwithstanding…it is a meme in his approach to opponents. What I get from his first year and a half in office is that he’s happy for the opposition to get all exercised about socialism and death panels and the like while he waits to expend his political capital when it really counts, like two weeks before a vote on health care. Play it cool, recognize that you’re in charge and strike carefully and methodically. He’s the first hip-hop president and it might work for him.

Here’s a good example, Ezra Klein. is puzzled as to why the administration is opening up offshore drilling opportunities in the face of its own environmental interest groups. Frankly I am too….is he “feathering the bed” for a big victory on cap and trade? What about immigration? Is he going to act on this to energize the Latino base? Whatever he does, he’s going to let his opposition get all angered and annoyed at the “government takeover” of something or another and slowly build the coalition necessary to get things done. He’s playing another game, or as Jay Z would say —

“I’m not a business man. I’m a business. Man! Let me handle my business, damn!”