It isn’t personal because Obama isn’t personal with people he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like people whose values are 180 degrees out of phase with his own.
Can you imagine his cajoling and schmoozing with Mitch McConnell? McConnell has been on a mission to take down his presidency ever since he was first elected. Can you imagine warming up to John Boehner. The things that they once had in common was a cigarette and a round of golf. That was a start, I guess.
I don’t think that the word schmooze is appropriate.
“Verb
Talk intimately and cozily; gossip.
Noun
A long and intimate conversation.”
For every legislative issue, there are key players from both parties in Congress, the House and Senate, who are chairpersons and senior leaders. The President would do well to sit face-to-face to discuss his ideas and to listen to them, both his champions and his opponents. From that, he is better prepared to address the subject.
I would not characterize them as a schmooze, but would label the conversations with something more akin to Obama’s brand. Let’s see, what would that be? Watch this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwh8kWuire8
Bump and run
That’s it.
'Pretty friendly guy’ Obama says he’s wooed GOP lawmakers
By Justin Sink and Molly K. Hooper - 01/15/13 05:00 AM ET
President Obama claimed on Monday that he’s a “pretty friendly guy” who likes “a good party.”He has great relationships with Republicans, he said, and enjoys lawmakers’ company.
Now that his daughters are getting older and don’t want to spend as much time with him, he’d “probably be calling around, looking for someone to play cards with me or something, because I’m getting kind of lonely in this big house ... So maybe a whole bunch of members of the House Republican caucus want to come over and socialize more.”This response, to a reporter’s questions about whether he and his staff are too insular and don’t socialize enough, drew laughs, but partisans in both parties say it’s a serious issue, and that the president is unwilling to do the kind of schmoozing necessary to secure a big bipartisan deal.
It might be especially important for a president who, at the outset of his second term, promises to win legislative battles on gun control and immigration, plus fix the nation’s finances and entitlement programs.
Neera Tanden, a former aide to both Obama and former President Clinton, complained last year to New York magazine that Obama “doesn’t call anyone” because “he’s not close to almost anyone.”
“It’s stunning that he’s in politics, because he really doesn’t like people,” Tanden said in a remark for which she later apologized.
Former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), for a time a key swing vote in the Senate, said she would give Obama a “close to failing” grade on his relationship with Congress.
“A president should be reaching out to many on the opposite side of the aisle — you know, to many Republicans, on a bipartisan basis,” Snowe told ABC News.
Republican aides say Obama has shown little sign of changing his stripes in a second term, despite comments he made Monday about how he could probably do a better job."
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