The company he keeps, cont'd

MANIFESTO

Is it me, or does the president-elect sound a lot like a certain sanctimonious New England senator in discussing his choice of Rick Warren as The Official Inauguration Invoker?

"It is important for Americans to come together, even though we may have disagreements on certain social issues ... That dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign's been all about; that we're not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we ... can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans."

Personally, I think a stance like this is inane and disingenuous. Or, as Dahlia Lithwick said in the most quoted blog of the last week:

The president-elect continues to confuse reaching across the aisle with being principled. Sometimes the principle is just too important to compromise.

This is a tenet that Holy Joe no longer understands, and it's very troubling to hear it coming from Obama.