Please Get Serious, Mr. President
Obama was elected as a crisis manager, but his interests lie elsewhere.
JAMES TARANTO
Please Get Serious, Mr. President
By common consent, the die was cast for last year's presidential election in September, when the financial panic hit and Barack Obama stayed cool while John McCain responded in dramatic but ineffective fashion. As president, however, Obama has fallen far short of the constancy voters thought they would be getting.
Yesterday, Obama was cool as a cucumber, as the Associated Press reports:
Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.
Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.
The president's proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.
But Obama, speaking to top executives of the Business Roundtable, expressed an optimistic vision and called for patience.
Optimism and patience were not on offer just a few weeks ago, when the president was telling us we were on the verge of CATASTROPHE!!!! unless Congress immediately authorized the spending of some $800 billion. Obama is asking us to believe that the so-called stimulus was both necessary and sufficient to turn things around in less than a month. He is straining the limits of our credulity and testing the limits of his own credibility.
Obama's new "optimistic" tone seems to reflect an adjustment in political tactics. Early in his term--until about a week ago, that is--administration officials were acting in accord with Rahm Emanuel's dictum "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." The theory seemed to be that if people felt the situation was dire, they would be more amenable to Obama's vision of transforming America into a European-style social democracy.
Now, it seems, Obama has concluded that the sense of crisis is an impediment to his goals. Therefore, he is counseling optimism and patience in the hope that that will win support for the things he wants to do.
But everyone knows the crisis is real, even if it falls short of a catastrophe. And hardly anyone is gullible enough to think that socializing the health-insurance business, imposing massive taxes on energy, and increasing the power of unions are going to resolve a crisis that has its origins in the credit markets.
Obama seems to care about the economic crisis only to the extent that it is an impediment to or an instrument for winning support for policies in unrelated areas. It is as if President Bush had responded to 9/11 by launching an all-out campaign for private Social Security accounts.
Obama is president today not because Americans were enamored with his policy proposals but because they were persuaded that he was, by dint of temperament and intellect, the better man to lead the nation in a time of crisis. If he fails to live up to that expectation, he risks letting the crisis worsen--and finding himself in the center of a political catastrophe.
World's Shortest Decade
A headline in the Washington Post reads "Bush May Have Set Back 'Clean Coal' Efforts by 10 Years, Report Says." It turns out to be a good example of journalistic failure to show even a modicum of skepticism in the face of political hyperbole. Here's what happened:
The Bush administration's decision to halt production of an experimental power plant that would capture and store carbon dioxide emissions underground may have set back "clean coal" technology in the United States by as much as a decade, according to a congressional report released at a hearing yesterday. . . .
The Bush administration killed plans to build the plant in December 2007, just hours after Mattoon was chosen over two sites in Texas, triggering allegations that the move was political. . . .
The research project was announced in 2003 by President George W. Bush, who promoted it as the centerpiece of his efforts to deal with climate change. After spending $175 million on the plant, it was killed by the administration, which cited rising cost estimates and an arrangement that had the government paying two-thirds of the price. Administration officials denied that it was killed for political reasons.
Another report, from the Government Accountability Office, faulted the Bush administration for failing to adjust its cost estimates for inflation. But here is the question: How could a decision to kill the project 15 months ago have set it back a decade, especially when it wasn't even started until well under a decade ago?
This isn't necessarily a rhetorical question. It could be that conditions were more favorable for such an effort in 2003 or 2007 than they are today, and that it would take years to re-create those conditions or to restart the project in their absence. But the Post looks ridiculous for parroting the 10-year claim without an explanation.
Even Paranoids Have Enemies, and They're Not All Jews
Charles Freeman, the screwball erstwhile diplomat who was briefly slated to be chairman of the National Intelligence Council, blamed the "Israel Lobby" for his hypovehiculation. Alexander Bolton of the Hill showed admirable reportorial enterprise in putting Freeman's slur to the test:
Republicans on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said pro-Israel lobby groups did not spur their opposition to Charles Freeman. . . .
In an e-mail to reporters, he blamed the "Israel lobby" for the derailment of his appointment.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla), a member of the Intelligence Committee, who signed the letter to Blair, said activities by pro-Israel lobbyists "had nothing to do with his opposition."
"When you see someone make those kind of statements that's going to be in that position and was unqualified to be there in the first place--it was the wrong appointment," said Coburn.
Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the vice chairman of the Intelligence panel, said Freeman's accusations against pro-Israel lobbying groups were off base.
"Unfortunately, Ambassador Freeman is suffering from some kind of delusion. I think a lot of people objected to his previous statements regardless of any lobbying."
Bond said he did not receive any contact from AIPAC and had not even heard of two Jewish groups that came out against Freeman's nomination: the Zionist Organization of America and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. . . .
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), another Republican on the Intelligence panel who objected to Freeman, said he was not contacted personally by any pro-Israel lobbyists.
"He had absolutely no analytical experience, that's what caused me great concern," Chambliss said of Freeman.
The rebuttal of Freeman's departing screed is bipartisan. Alcee Hastings of Florida, a senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, tells Bolton, "I'm close to AIPAC. If they did come out against Freeman, I was not in the loop because no one called me to say a word about Charles Freeman."
Spot the Party
Today's New York Post features a letter to the editor from a haughty Massachusetts Democrat:
"DC Party Poopers Scare Clubs," (March 9) is an exercise in misdirection.
My legislation is simple: If a huge company accepts bailout funds from the taxpayer, they cannot waste it on lavish parties, expensive dinners and Tiffany trinkets.
Normal marketing, events, conferences and travel that create jobs would not be affected.
American families are watching every penny they spend. Big companies bailed out by the taxpayers should do the same.
The big banks were given billions to increase lending, not to throw junkets with "Earth, Wind and Fire."
Spending on tourism and entertainment will increase if we get our economy moving again.
I will continue pushing for legislation that protects the taxpayer, puts people back to work and boosts our economy.
Sen. John Kerry
Washington, DC
The original Post report, an item in its Page Six gossip column, argued that the Kerry restrictions would end up hurting the businesses and workers that make their livings from corporate parties:
Kerry introduced the bill after learning the Northern Trust Corp. of Chicago, a profitable bank that received $1.6 billion in government cash, had sponsored a golf tournament in Los Angeles with special outings for clients featuring performances by Earth, Wind and Fire and Sheryl Crow. . . .
"At the end of the day, we are an industry of valets, caterers, florists, groomers and the like," said Shawn Sedlacek, whose VOX Group handled technical and marketing aspects of the Northern Trust event. "For every $100,000 that's spent on an event, $90,000 of that goes to human power. This backlash of 'don't do events' is going to hurt a lot of working-class people."
A rep for the National Business Travel Association said, "In this economy, businesses wouldn't be throwing money around if they didn't expect a return. This bill could really hurt a lot of the people the government is trying to help."
Matt Levine, who owns a Manhattan nightclub, quips, "Just because John Kerry didn't get into the White House, and probably wouldn't get into The Eldridge either, he should really be focusing on creating more jobs, not taking them away." But this isn't entirely fair. Kerry is quite the party animal, as TMZ.com reported last summer; and he did get into the White House, at least if you can believe what you read in The Economist:
For all Europe's Obamamania Mr Obama is, in fact, one of the least European-minded of American presidents. JFK studied at the London School of Economics with Harold Laski, a leading British socialist. Bill Clinton went to Oxford University and surrounded himself with Rhodes scholars who liked to discuss the German educational model. John Kerry was famously not just French-speaking but also "French-looking."
And did we mention he served in Vietnam? Kerry's indignation over Earth Wind and Fire is also ironic, given that, as the New York Times reported, the '70s R&B band played the White House just last month. We're pretty sure that wasn't during the Kerry administration, though.
Reliable Sources
The Obama administration has yet another personnel problem, the Associated Press reports:
An aide to President Barack Obama is on leave from his White House job after the FBI raided his old District of Columbia government office Thursday, arresting a city employee and a technology consultant on corruption charges, a White House official said.
The charges were lodged against the two men at a federal court hearing as the FBI finished searching the city's technology office, which was led until recently by Obama's new computer chief, Vivek Kundra.
Kundra himself isn't accused of any wrongdoing, but he "is on leave from his White House job until further details of the case become known, according to a White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the official did not want to publicly discuss personnel matters."
Sounds as though it would have been more accurate to say, ". . . because the official did want to publicly discuss personnel matters but knew he wasn't supposed to."
Another AP dispatch has an even more risible explanation for a grant of anonymity:
Inter Milan manager Jose Mourinho is under investigation for allegedly punching a fan after his team's Champions League loss to Manchester United.
Inter denied Mourinho was involved in any altercation.
Manchester Police said Thursday they were investigating a 46-year-old man in connection with a "very minor assault" at Old Trafford on Wednesday night.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with policy of not publicly naming suspects, confirmed the man under investigation was the 46-year-old Portuguese coach.
We don't know what an "Inter Milan manager" or a "Champions League loss" is, although we guess it has something to do with either sports or soccer. But if the official's anonymity was in line with policy, the only suspects the policy keeps from being publicly named are those who are suspected of violating the policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment