"This ought to be a season for cooperation in terms of pushing our economy forward, job creation, steadying the middle class, and laying the groundwork for a better future. And that's what we want to work on with Republicans and Democrats"
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“Season for cooperation” is Axelrod at his most strategically pastoral: politics as weather, conflict as a temporary storm we can all simply outlast. The phrasing softens what is, in practice, a hard ask for leverage. “Ought to be” carries the moral nudge - not a prediction, a gentle reprimand - implying that anyone resisting bipartisan work is behaving out of season, like putting up Christmas lights in July.
Notice how the agenda is stacked with nouns that poll well and fight poorly: “pushing our economy forward,” “job creation,” “steadying the middle class,” “laying the groundwork.” These are goals broad enough to sound urgent and inevitable, but vague enough to avoid naming the tradeoffs that actually define policy (taxes, regulation, spending cuts, whose jobs, whose middle class). The rhetoric is less about policy detail than about framing the battlefield: if the public is primed to see the moment as an economic rescue mission, opposition can be cast as obstruction rather than ideology.
The final line - “that’s what we want to work on with Republicans and Democrats” - is classic Axelrod-era message discipline. It performs openness while quietly asserting ownership of the “better future” brand. It also preemptively distributes blame: if cooperation fails, the speaker has already taken the reasonable pose, leaving the other side looking petty. In the Obama-world context Axelrod helped build, bipartisanship isn’t just a governing aspiration; it’s a reputational shield and a pressure tactic, aimed as much at voters watching cable news as at legislators in the room.
Notice how the agenda is stacked with nouns that poll well and fight poorly: “pushing our economy forward,” “job creation,” “steadying the middle class,” “laying the groundwork.” These are goals broad enough to sound urgent and inevitable, but vague enough to avoid naming the tradeoffs that actually define policy (taxes, regulation, spending cuts, whose jobs, whose middle class). The rhetoric is less about policy detail than about framing the battlefield: if the public is primed to see the moment as an economic rescue mission, opposition can be cast as obstruction rather than ideology.
The final line - “that’s what we want to work on with Republicans and Democrats” - is classic Axelrod-era message discipline. It performs openness while quietly asserting ownership of the “better future” brand. It also preemptively distributes blame: if cooperation fails, the speaker has already taken the reasonable pose, leaving the other side looking petty. In the Obama-world context Axelrod helped build, bipartisanship isn’t just a governing aspiration; it’s a reputational shield and a pressure tactic, aimed as much at voters watching cable news as at legislators in the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Leadership |
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