Proving, yet again, that he's a politically savvy guy, Obama has dinner with conservative columnists. Rumor has it that El Rushbo was there, but that rumor has been squelched. And Teh One is to break bread with liberal commenters tonight.
It makes sense to me that he would try to shake hands across the aisle, so to speak with some of the same people who will be criticizing his policies. I'm sure conservatives will be kinder and more polite than the leftosphere ever was to George W. Bush, who discovered that Washington is a bipartisan place only in the sense that they eat in the same lunchroom. Some even enjoyed movie night with the POTUS until he didn't spend 24/7 in sitting in his office looking concerned (psst. Grey hair tell the story, dude).
Obama's honeymoon will be short, regardless of who samples the soup with him. With a slow economy and various foreign entanglements, he's sure to hack off those on the right, but also, delightfully, those on the left, as well.
UPDATE: Condescension from the laughable left:
I actually don't find it terribly surprising that liberals haven't shown any outrage over Barack Obama's dinner party with George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Bill Kristol, and David Brooks. I'll get to my hypothesis why liberals aren't upset in a moment. But first imagine this counterfactual: George W. Bush (or maybe a victorious John McCain) sat down before his first inauguration with Paul Krugman, E.J. Dionne, and Frank Foer. Would conservatives have reacted with the same equanimity? No, I think they'd have gone nuts. And the reason is that they wouldn't have confidence in Bush or McCain to be surrounded by liberal ideas without being deeply influenced by them. I don't think they'd have reacted this way if, say, a President Mitt Romney did the same thing.
And that's why liberals aren't having a cow. They know that Obama understands far more about policy than any of his right-wing dinner companions, is used to being exposed to opposing ideas, and won't come out of that dinner telling his staff, "Hey, did you know we cut half the capital gains tax and raise more revenue?"
Oh, yeah. That's why he picked a tax evader to head the Treasury. But, at least, they aren't calling Geithner unpatriotic.
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