Apparently, this morning’s NBC interview with Matt Lauer (which Jennifer wrote about earlier) was rich in clues to the mindset of Barack Obama. Perhaps most interesting is that Obama set the stage for a veritable bazaar of fresh flip-flops. Here’s Mike Allen, at the Politico:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview aired Tuesday that the cost of the mortgage bailout plan may rein in his ambitious plans for health care, energy, education and infrastructure.
[...]
Obama told NBC’s Matt Lauer on the “Today” show that he doesn’t expect the mortgage plan to cost the full $700 billion right away, and all the money won’t be lost.
“Does that mean that I can do everything that I’ve called for in this campaign right away?” Obama said. “Probably not. I think we’re going to have to phase it in. And a lot of it’s going to depend on what our tax revenues look like.”
Real-world contingencies have a way of impeding Obama’s utopian ambitions. But it would be a sign of the candidate’s seriousness if he could factor reality into his plans beforehand. And it would also clarify for voters just what they’re voting for. Whether it’s talking to America’s enemies, “ending” a war because it’s ugly, or showing restraint in off-shore drilling, Obama’s vows tend to get derailed on the way to fruition. And you can say that the current financial meltdown was an unforeseeable emergency (or a “game-changer,” as Obama likes to say). But what are leaders for, if not to put the country on the best possible footing should we be struck by an unforeseeable emergency? There will always, after all, be unforeseeable emergencies.
Barack Obama wants to quell the oceans, cool the planet, and feed the hungry. Who doesn’t? But it turns out the dispensing of miracles is “going to depend on what our tax revenues look like.” No matter what he told Matt Lauer, a revenue shortage doesn’t simply mean you slow the implementation of initiatives. Obama, should he become president, will have to engage in a vast restructuring of the programs he promised to deliver. If you’re going to stagger out certain energy, education, infrastructure, and health care policies, those policies need to be designed with a staggered timetable in mind. You can’t decide to build half a school or a quarter of a wind farm and then wait on revenue. This leaves Obama’s grand plans precisely nowhere. But he can probably cover over that frightening fact for the next month and a half with a little help from his friends in the press.
They forgot to talk about foreign policy in there. Oh wait, Barack Obama really hasn’t talked about foreign policy, has he? Other than pissing off our trading partners with this idiotic “Buy American” provision in the spending bill, kissing the Middle East’s -in particular, Iran’s- ass, and snubbing Australia and India, we really don’t know how Barack Obama is going to act on the world stage (maybe he already has). But Mr. Citizen of the World will let us know soon enough. Just right after he has a campaign stop in my home city of Phoenix, AZ to…advocate for the spending bill that was just passed by the Congress. What?
Interesting to see even tip-toeing from the MSM this soon after the inauguration.
I wonder what will happen next. It seems that Obama is due for a breather, but maybe not.
Remain calm. All is well!
Where were these questions before the election?
I’m with the environmental whackos on this point, newsprint is a terrible waste of trees.
Mom Blogs – Blogs for Moms…
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Four or five miles up along the road to serfdom is a good place to pull the car over for a breather, and figure out the way ahead. Hopefully the tiptoe-type introspection will be full-scale stomping the next time the government rolls out some cobbled-together piece of legislative mediocrity like this awful bill.
We keep hearing how wonderful team Obama was during the “transition”, but it’s starting to look to me like the success of the transition was due to team Bush.
When team Obama is on its own it looks a bit disheveled.
Shocked the O-bots haven’t swamped this thread with their typical ….
LOOK!!!!!! A DANCING CHICKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S BUSH’S FAULT!!!!!!!!!!
misdirection.
Jennifer, don’t await those op-eds too anxiously. Personally, I recommend Xanax.
#4: Thank you, Comrade. As it used to be said in the Paradise of Brother (untonsured) Joseph, “Life is getting better, comrades, life is getting happier.”
“Sound” liberalism is a kind of riot and revolution insurance, don’t you think? They try to walk a fine line between appeasing an imaginary mob and supporting some free enterprise, but not too much.
What happens, then, when instead of “sound” liberalism, they get a bone chilling economy falling off a cliff, worsened by a wet behind the ears President Slick making it up as he goes.
Well, darn! It just might be that all of this “sound” liberalism has been quietly undermining the foundation for so long that our house is crumbling falling off that cliff.
So The Washington Post and the New York Times start to have misgivings? Ya think?
One can be polite and refer to something as dog excrement or one can use the more colloquial phrase. At the end of the conversation, the smell coming from it is the same. The media, at least those with any shred of dignity remaining, is beginning to notice the egg on their faces and the aroma surrounding them.
Dickens (#8) is quite correct. The Bush transition team bent over backwards for the good of the country and guided Team Obama. Now that the group Obumble is without the safety net, all can observe what their true capabilities are.
When the NY Times and Kos and Huff trio take off the blinders the game will be up. Obviously, I’m not holding my breath and not recommending anyone else do without oxygen either. But the true nature of the occupant and his minions will out. The leopard doesn’t change it’s spots; and people can learn on the job. I don’t often credit Joe Biden with anything remotely considered intelligence, but credit him I must. The Presidency is not set up for on the job training.
#8 is right on! The Adults left the Reins of Govt and NOW we are seeing the “great campainer” do what he does best….stoke anger and discomfort forgetting that he is the one in charge now. The curtain is raised, the people are watching, and they are now beginning to walk out on the show…meanwhile, the main actor says…it may take a little be longer..but I won..remember.
Great Article Jennifer!
here’s a recent post from dailykos. looks like it’s going to take more than tip-toeing to make the koolaid-drinkers sit up and take notice:
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Yeah, I know there were those who thought that Obama’s obsession with “bipartisanship” was some sort of clever master plan to outflank Republicans or something, but in reality, the obsession with getting Republican votes ended up detracting from the selling of the stimulus itself to the American people. That apparently won’t happen anymore.
Obama was elected to find solutions to our nation’s pressing problems. Obama and the majority Democrats need to implement the best possible solutions to those problems. If Republicans have genuinely good ideas (i.e., not their tired “tax cuts!” crap, especially now that Democrats have passed the largest tax cut in American history with zero Republican support), then fantastic. They can bring them to the table for due consideration. Otherwise, they shouldn’t get a second thought from the adults actually trying to clean up George W. Bush’s messes.
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Can Jen keep this concern trolling up for four years? Won’t that get monotonous and exhausting? Wouldn’t it be better to spend a little time doing something constructive?
“Crushing deficits” were a popular topic at the time we were deciding whether to embark on a $2 trillion war? Please point to those posts around here.
Jim: Oh, boys! Lookee what I got heyuh.
Bart: Hey, where the white women at?
To Michiganruth; by all means lets just raise taxes as we’ve done in the state of Michigan! That has worked so well that you had a single state recession since 2000! I know, I know; LA and MS joined you after 2005, but wasn’t there something about a hurricane that was in the news?
The dems are such adept planners and seers of all things that they’ve already figured out what the unintended consequences of every single portion of the 1300 page bill! Wow! How could everyone doubt their sincerity and competency? They’ve killed the automobile industry, crippled energy production and ruined public education! And guess what! They want to do the same for health care!
You will of course pardon me for waiting for actual accomplishments, besides the provable destruction, before we vote to promote Dear Leader to Sainthood.
I might point out that whether you agree with it or not, if you believe in counter cyclical spending, you will oppose deficits at the height of economic cycle such as those created by Bush and support deficits during the bottom of the economic cycle such as now. You don’t help your cause by implying hypocrisy where there is none.
But, more importantly, why are all the comments about Obama when Israel seems to be facing one of its most significant political crisis?
I didn’t expect more.
The WaPo and others have not yet realized that Obama doesn’t make ANY decisions. Its a melee behind the scenes, and his job is to wait till somebody gets picked by the power brokers and he gets to announce it as his choice. And to try explain his way out of it if it turns bad. That’s the deal: the backroom boys do the planning and the picking, he gets to tell the world and to sway the multitudes if any questions arise. Hey! That’s the way it played in Chicago. That’s how its going to play in D.C.
And hat’s exactly the way Axelrod and the DNC want it. He delivered a badly conceived bill for them, giving them – in less than a month- the go-ahead on the greatest spending spree in history, by staying out of the drafting procedures and going into spell-binder mode to make sure no time was wasted in study or bipartisan crap. So now he can loaf around in Chicago, or Hawaii, or kindergarten classrooms. or Hollywood, with Michelle, until they need him to announce some other scam or half-baked cabinet choice. That’s the payola for his golden tongue.
He’s the BARKER – and the SHILL – the come-on guy – in the greatest con game in the history of politics. The public is going to realize that he’s a hustler, and apparently the MSM is already getting nervous. I’ d bet his ratings will plunge before the year is out. It’s not going to work in foreign relations. It is hard to scam the Arabs – that’s their specialty.
Like Rush, I hope Obama fails miserably while imposing Socialism on American…the flip side is the fun watching the MSM try to “non-report” what is obvious to anyone.
I don’t know why anyone is worried. I don’t know why anyone is surprised. Did anyone really think, that this Idiot was gonna just walk in, and do things right? Why? Because he can read from a teleprompter? (I understand that he read from a teleprompter, at the beginning of his Press Conference) There’s NOTHING in his past, that should lead ANYONE to believe, that he has a CLUE, as to what to do about ANYTHING. He’s a TALKER. A BULLSH*T ARTIST. Everybody knows one. They never DO anything. But they sure can TALK about doing stuff. HIS Stimulus Plan? Did HE write it? Did HE have ANY input, on this thing? No. Pelosi wrote it. What was he doing, while this piece of garbage, that threatens to destroy our FREEDOMS, was being cobbled together behind CLOSED DOORS? He was TALKING. Reading out loud, to be precise, to ‘school children’. Our WHOLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM, our BANKING SYSTEM, our MAJOR COMPANIES, the LIFEBLOOD of our WAY OF LIFE is crashing down around our ears, and SUPER COMMUNITY ORGANIZER is reading kid books. So how come there’s no snickering? No jokes on the Late Night Shows? NO, ‘Where was Obama’? Funny how things change, in the Perceptions of some folk,( i.e. the MEDIA) when you’ve got a (D) next to your name.
In Colin Powell’s famous formulation in another matter, “You break it, you own it.”
The WaPo, the NYT, The AP, the other major metro dailies, and the major network news operations all “own” the Obama presidency, in the sense that they “broke” an essential process of our democracy — a campaign to elect a president — with their outrageous bias, whose effect easily could have contributed to the margin of Mr. Obama’s victory. (Yes, I know, polling shows the public was well aware of this, but you’ll never convince me this made it immune to the narrative the MSM set very early on. ) Their comeuppance, in the form of a failed Obama presidency, would be delicious if it were not so dangerous for the country.
Mr. Obama’s presidency is in its very earliest stage, and we all can hope for true bipartisanship and the real solutions we seek to the problems we face, where we now see only superficiality and fecklessness from him and his Democratic brethren in Congress. Even so, one can’t escape the nagging fear that in the not-too-distant future we may arrive at the conclusion that, in our 44th President, “there is no there, there.”
@19 RLH, jr
So the “Bush recession” is down the memory hole now that it is inconvenient? The economy didn’t take off until the last half of 2003 (peaking at 3.4% of GDP) after which the deficits declined until recently (down to 1.5% in 2007 before rising to 5.3% last year). I also didn’t hear almost any lefty make the counter-cyclical argument, they were mostly “the deficits are bad in and of themselves” or “they are the biggest deficits ever which is bad”. Franglo there is a case in point, arguing over deficits themselves and not making a counter-cyclical point. That would be hypocrisy.
@16 Franglo
So you mean the $600 billion war that has been paid for over 6 years? That’s quite a bit different than $2-3.5 trillion deficit in a single year Obama and the Democrats are aiming for. True $850 billion of that was Bush’s (the second TARP $350 billion was released by Bush just because as a good man he wanted to save Obama some trouble), but that’s not enough for the Democrats now that they are in poiwer. Not to mention Obama has said he’ll need trillion dollar deficits for years to come. So in one year Obama will almost match Bush’s $3.3 trillion in deficits and will certainly do so in 2 years.
There’s nothing wrong with saying $600 billion over 6 years is alright but $2-3.5 trillion in one year is too much. That’s logically sound. Those who screamed bloody murder at $3.3 trillion over 8 years in extra deficit but now demand $2-3.5 trillion in a single are the ones who have to explain their changed position. BTW, most conservatives weren’t happy about Bush’s deficits either but as the Democrats are showing we were right in our belief they were smaller than what Democrats would do if elected.
@”Scientific Socialist”
What a lovely name! Can you please explain this scientific socialism?
Great comments on this thread. Most of you are spot on in your descriptions of Barack Hussein Obama, our first Affirmative Action president: His election was scripted by our elitist news media, he is deeply unscrupulous, he is a lifelong extreme leftist, he has no idea what he’s doing, he is vastly increasing the power and scope of an already intrusive government, he is bankrupting the country, and his presidential policies are made for him by his power-brokering aides.
I’ll add that he simply promotes the prepackaged policies he agrees with and goes along with the ones he doesn’t understand. We have a man with a teenager’s grasp of politics heading our government.
It sickens me that many conservatives who should know better are holding out “hope” that this fraud will somehow rise to the occasion.
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