They're just not that into you, Mr. President.

As the White House dithers around Mr. Obama’s jobs speech next Thursday (after a ridiculous back-and-forth with John Boehner about the scheduling), I find myself wondering why the administration is acting like a loser who keeps dating jerks.

So I turned to the bestselling book He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, and found dead-on descriptions of what the President has experienced with the Republicans in Congress, along with some very good advice:

It’s quite clear that the Republicans are just not that into you, Mr. Obama. If they were, they’d be trying harder:

"A man who wants to make a relationship work will move mountains to keep the woman he loves."

And yet you keep trying.

"We're taught that in life, we should try to look on the bright side. Not in this case. In this case, assume rejection first. Assume you're the rule, not the exception. It's liberating.”

You act as if the Republicans are as good as their word, and you don’t call them on it publicly when they don’t follow through on their promises of true bipartisanship.

"We have become a sloppy bunch of people. We say things we don't mean. We make promises we don't keep. "I'll call you." "Let's get together." We know we won't. On the Human Interaction Stock Exchange, our words have lost almost all their value. And the spiral continues, as we now don't even expect people to keep their word; in fact we might even be embarrassed to point out to the dirty liar that they never did what they said they'd do. So if a guy you're dating doesn't call when he says he's going to, why should that be such a big deal? Because you should be dating a man who's at least as good as his word."

Remember when you were meeting with John Boehner about the big budget initiative—until Mr. Boehner walked out and refused to take your phone calls?

"There's nothing worse, in dating terms, nothing worse, than that sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when it looks like the guy you were seeing or getting to know has decided to bail on you instead of talking to you about it. Nothing worse."

"Don't ask yourself what you did wrong or how you could have done it differently. Don't waste your valuable heart and mind trying to figure out why he did what he did. Or thinking back on all the things he said, and wondering what was the truth and what was the lie.”

In the end, maybe this is where you will find yourself:

“Every movie we see, Every story we're told implores us to wait for it, the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule. But sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. How to tell from the ones who want us and the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. And maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy, maybe... it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. Maybe the happy ending is... just... moving on. Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment you never gave up hope."

Not good enough, sir. The country needs far more than that. I am hoping that you come out swinging, with a hugely audacious plan you believe in and evangelize everywhere, every day. A plan to put tens of thousands of people back to work, rebuilding our infrastructure and renovating school buildings, making them safer, more energy-efficient, and better places for our kids to learn. And that, rather than cutting spending for programs that truly do make a difference, you go after more revenue from those who have exploited the system for their own profit.

"It's very tempting when you really want to be with someone to settle for much, much less — even a vague pathetic facsimile of less — than you would have ever imagined. Remember always what you set out to get and please don't settle for less.”

Let the Republicans hoist themselves on their own petard, as they rally around the billionaires and the bankers—the supposed job-creators who, in spite of tax cuts and loopholes, have yet to create the jobs Americans so badly want and need.

It’s past time to keep playing their game, Mr. President, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The bottom line is this: they’re just not that into you. Kick ‘em to the curb and reach for your ideals. Stand up for yourself. Stand up for us.

Marketing Tips for the Administration

Time to do some marketing, Mr. President. (And you Congressional Democrats.)

Run a series of ads spotlighting the individual Americans who are benefiting from the stimulus package. Let the people speak for themselves about their jobs and how their lives have changed as a result.

Run a series of ads spotlighting the various projects across the country that have been funded by the stimulus package. Let the project/site manager and/or the people working on the project speak.

Include a counter in the corner that ticks away, rolling up the numbers of how many jobs have been created -- just keep it ticking away, still going as each ad ends (to show it's an ongoing process).

Stop ceding this ground to the Republicans and TeaBaggers. You can win the battle for people's hearts and minds.

Stop telling everyone what you're doing and the impact it's had on people's lives -- show us. Over and over and over again. On TV. On the radio. Online.

A Culture of Ignorance

Watching the congressional health care scrum and ensuing “town hall meetings,” I find myself wondering whatever happened to the art of critical thinking. The near-decade of politicians on the right pandering to the lowest common denominator—devaluing intellectuals, rigorous education, and what used to pass for common sense—has created a weird cult-like segment of the population that is easily led by falsehoods and fear.

When people aren’t doing their own thinking, it’s easy to prey on their ignorance of the issues. It’s a piece of cake to get them to see themselves as victims of an enormous and complicated system they don’t and can't understand.

Does anyone really believe that any part of the various proposed health care policies include a “death panel?” And how can people not see that, in effect, that is how our current system works, with insurance companies deciding who gets coverage and treatment and who doesn’t? I watch people ranting on TV and wonder, “Who are these people?” They seem like agitated and terrified creatures from some alternate universe.

Our culture has encouraged people to become passive observers who believe what they are told by people who cast every issue as a binary choice: right or wrong. Our people, it would seem, no longer are taught how to do the real work of independently assessing information, determining by their own investigation and standards what’s true or false, and then acting on it in a rational manner.

Instead, many people appear to have no filters; they drink in what they’re told. They sit back and let ever-more-shrill politicians, zealots, and pundits tell them what they should think, largely based on what they should fear. Fear-mongering is like fast food for the brain: it’s easy to incite and triggers adrenalin, providing an immediate emotional payoff (Kapow!). It is far less exciting to take the time to study, assess, and come to one’s own conclusion about complex, often hard-to-understand issues (Yawn).

When there is true critical thinking, it is difficult to get a group of informed and intelligent people to come to agreement on most issues. How then can the Republicans walk in lock step on nearly every issue? How is it that they manage to represent everything in binary black-and-white/right-and-wrong terms? The answer is that people want assurance and clarity from their leaders. It makes folks feel safe--they know where the boundaries are. The problem is that most issues that our government has to grapple with are not black-and-white, with clearly defined edges, and there are few, if any, set-in-stone yes/no answers. That’s one reason why the Democrats are always in such disarray—between a tradition of independent thinking and a culture of political ambition, it’s pretty hard to get those ducks in a row.

It will take a huge shift to overcome the culture of ignorance we’ve created. I can only hope that Mr. Obama can somehow find a way to overcome the overwhelming resistance to thinking for oneself. And the rest of us might want to consider our role in this, too.