Time for the stick.

I think that the president has shown good instincts and equipped himself very well in these initial weeks of his presidency. But if I may be so bold as to offer a suggestion, I would say - Dude, you won. The debate is over - govern. Obama is a hell of an orator and he likes to orate. He offered to debate someone the other day on the stimulus package. This isn't Steven Douglas or Hamilton/Jefferson. Or the Harvard Law Review. You have a country to run. Barack, take a little note from your idiot predecessor. He had a paltry 51% of the vote and decided to shove the whole thing down our collective throat. You have a mandate and enough chaos extant to totally turn the rotten apple cart over. The world as we knew it has fundamentally changed. There is no sense in repeating the tired old strategies that got us into the mess in the first place. You watered down the House stimulus bill for those crappy little republicans and got nothing for your sacrifice. And it still passed without their help. Why bother being nice? Time to be a dick. If you need lessons, call me.