On the subject of the proposed pay-as-you-go rules, the Washington Post editors compare the president to a wishful dieter who insists that his “regular consumption includes four gooey slices of chocolate cake daily — which you have no intention of giving up.” They note that the exceptions to PAYGO swallow the rule. It doesn’t include discretionary spending and it has ”four whopping exceptions to the pay-as-you-go rule: extending most of the Bush tax cuts, keeping the estate tax at its current level, preventing the alternative minimum tax from hitting more taxpayers, and increasing Medicare payments to doctors. This adds up to a $2.8 trillion loophole over 10 years.” The Post editors are tired of the excuses:
[T]he president’s self-congratulatory back-patting about fiscal rectitude is more than a bit hard to take in light of the huge exceptions he would grant. Yes, the president inherited a budget in arrears, an economy in tatters and a tax system that is unsustainable as written. It was necessary to add to the deficit in the short term to jolt the economy back to life. The House has these four exemptions in its pay-as-you-go rule; even without the Obama exceptions, there was no reasonable hope that these costs would be paid for.
Yet Mr. Obama’s professions of being willing to make hard choices are belied by his failure to adjust his spending plans to budgetary reality. Something will need to give — either raising significantly more revenue or dramatically scaling back government. He doesn’t deserve much credit for a pay-as-you-go proposal that elides this reality instead of confronting it.
What’s more — the president is making it worse on a daily basis. Buying car companies and expanding healthcare coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans is going to make our fiscal picture even bleaker. Again and again we come back to reality. The president projects an aura of “responsibility” and grown-up sobriety, but his actions suggest otherwise. How long before the media stop cooing over his speeches and rhetoric and start asking tough questions? Here’s one: why is he embarking on a $1.2 trillion new healthcare plan when we are already broke?
In the meantime, Obama flies AF1 all the way across the country to insult handicapped people on a late night talk show. Jen and Brooks are right, he has nothing better to do. Maybe he could use the time trying to learn some class.
Actually that’s a good Brooks column — better than I’ve come to expect.
Given the economic crisis, Obama’s appearance on the Jay Leno show last night was a surprising move. Is Obama that unserious a president? Are American voters truly willing to accept this sort of frivolity while their homes and investmetns plummet in value?
Does anyone know what the JournoList talking points are for today?
“So it’s understandable that the president might want to master quantum mechanics — or run off to California.”
Or work on his bowling game. Amid the furor over the special olympics comment is lost a question that comes to mind: Why, with all he has to do right now, is our president working on his bowling game?
In a similar vein, you might want to consider going through the Washington Post’s endorsement of the President and see how much of it held up.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/16/AR2008101603436_pf.html
Mr. Obama is a man of supple intelligence, with a nuanced grasp of complex issues and evident skill at conciliation and consensus-building. At home, we believe, he would respond to the economic crisis with a healthy respect for markets tempered by justified dismay over rising inequality and an understanding of the need for focused regulation. Abroad, the best evidence suggests that he would seek to maintain U.S. leadership and engagement, continue the fight against terrorists, and wage vigorous diplomacy on behalf of U.S. values and interests. Mr. Obama has the potential to become a great president. Given the enormous problems he would confront from his first day in office, and the damage wrought over the past eight years, we would settle for very good.
One could get the impression that the editors of the Post are questioning elements of that endorsement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/17/AR2009031702936.html?nav=rss_opinions
Under the circumstances, we can understand why President Obama feels that he must join this opportunistic chorus rather than resist it. Still, this has not been a stellar moment for the man who came into office arguing that “the time has come to set aside childish things.” With hundreds of billions of dollars in necessary repairs to the financial system still to come, Mr. Obama must find a way to explain those costs in terms that neither inflame the public nor insult its intelligence.
How hard it is to figure out? He’s lost, in over his head. He wasn’t ready for this job and now we’re all paying for it.
Yes, well, isn’t it time we all dropped the fictional narrative of Obama possessing “supple intelligence,” a “nuanced grasp,” and the “evident skill”–as the demonstration of such qualities is entirely absent. I’m sure he’s a fine man, but this was the same bill of goods the MSM tried (and failed) to sell us on John Kerry. Obama was a cipher with no accomplishments, so there was no evidence to contradict the media narrative–demonstrating the impossibility of proving a negative.
It’s bit of a shame because Obama has never demonstrated any ability to grow in office, except to improve upon his skills reading a teleprompter–perhaps he’ll learn to drop a few of those “umms” and “ahhs” when speaking off script.
Perhaps a change in control of Congress in 2010 will rein in his worst instincts.
The premise of Brooks and his ilk that if Obama just weren’t so gosh darn smart and would just focus his brilliant mind everything would be OK is a big joke.
If Obama ever gets focused, duck!
Don’t worry, Brooks will print another ‘He’s a mountain, a dreamy, dreamy mountain’ column next. this is his pattern.
CAn we spend some time getting ticked at the Congress as well. Maybe they thought Obama was a genius because compared to the other end of the avenue all those twinkling lights look real dim to me.
It doesn’t matter if BO’s smart. It doesn’t matter of he’s nuanced, elegant, supple, tall, thin, stupid, or whatever the hell you like. It doesn’t matter because Barack Obama is A LAZY CUSS. Indolent. Idle. Possessed of a whim of iron. Perfect for academia, I’ll grant him that. But a disaster anywhere else. How long, I keep asking, will it take for this stubborn and apparently unalterable character defect of his to sink in to even an impartial observer?
The scenario has become drearily familiar. A problem (to say no more) arises, the Teleprompter gives a speech, and then it’s head-for-the-showers time, you betcha. Pour a martini and head straight for a couch – any damn couch – on a talk show, for instance. Yakkety-yak, gabbety-gab, and la-dee-friggin’-da. He is America’s first Lo-Cal President. He has succeeded in everything he’s “felt like” doing without breaking an inelegant sweat. Why should he change?