Posted by
THE UNREPENTANT LIBERTARIAN on Wednesday, March 11, 2009 11:16:20 AM
For all those who thought that presidential skills originate in a teleprompter, Obama's disastrous start as president may come as a surprise. Others, who realize that experience matters, are having a see-I-told-you-so moment. But the most critical group that may turn against Obama are the vanity liberals, who make up a sizeable part of the Democrat party's voter base. They express liberal opinions for social reasons and - unlike genuine conservatives - are fundamentally racist, thinking blacks can only make it with the help of the superior white hand. Solid testimonies of this are in the way Democrats in Congress treated Justice Clarence Thomas and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Surfer that he is, President Obama should know a riptide when he's in one. The center usually is the safest, most productive place in politics, but perhaps not now, not in a once-in-a-century economic crisis. Swimming in the middle, he's denounced as a socialist by conservatives, criticized as a polite accommodationist by government-is-the-answer liberals, and increasingly, dismissed as being in over his head by technocrats. Luckily for Obama, the public still likes and trusts him, at least judging by the latest polls, including NEWSWEEK's. But, in ways both large and small, what's left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.
Except those who read his resume during the campaign...
They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president's character: he's not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans.
That is because his advisors tell him to. Obama himself has no idea how to govern. Unlike a governor, he has never governed before. He has telepromptered.
And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He'd have made a fine judge.
In the town court in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, perhaps.
But we don't need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach. Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list.
The kind of things that give you a good appearance, not the things that build a substantial resume. For those things you actually have to work. Not his strongest character trait.
But there is only one question on this great test of American fate: can he lead us away from plunging into another Depression?
No, of course not.
If the establishment still has power, it is a three-sided force, churning from inside the Beltway, from Manhattan-based media and from what remains of corporate America. Much of what they are saying is contradictory, but all of it is focused on the president: The $787 billion stimulus, gargantuan as it was, was in fact too small and not aimed clearly enough at only immediate job-creation.
Wrong, of course - the stimulus bill was too big when the first dime of spending was put on paper. But be that as it may. What matters here is how the "establishment" is turning on Obama.
The $275 billion home-mortgage-refinancing plan, assembled by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, is too complex and indirect. The president gave up the moral high ground on spending not so much with the "stim" but with the $400 billion supplemental spending bill, larded as it was with 9,000 earmarks.
Which, according to the president's teleprompter, did not contain any earmarks.
The administration is throwing good money after bad in at least two cases—the sinkhole that is Citigroup (there are many healthy banks) and General Motors (they deserve what they get). The failure to call for genuine sacrifice on the part of all Americans, despite the rhetorical claim that everyone would have to "give up" something. A willingness to give too much leeway to Congress to handle crucial details, from the stim to the vague promise to "reform" medical care without stating what costs could be cut.
Obama has gotten away with vague nonsense ever since college. Why change tactics now...?
A 2010 budget that tries to do far too much, with way too rosy predictions on future revenues and growth of the economy. This led those who fear we are about to go over Niagara Falls to deride Obama as a paddler who'd rather redesign the canoe.
Because that is why he wanted to be president in the first place. He is a Marxist theorist who had never had to go where the rubber meets the ground.
A treasury secretary who has been ridiculed on "Saturday Night Live" and compared to Doogie Howser, Barney Fife and Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone"—and those are the nice ones. A seeming paralysis in the face of the banking crisis: unwilling to nationalize banks, yet unable to figure out how to handle toxic assets in another way—by, say, setting up a "bad bank" catch basin. A seeming reluctance to seek punishing prosecutions of the malefactors of the last 15 years—and even considering a plea bargain for Bernie Madoff, the poster thief who stole from charities and Nobel laureates and all the grandparents of Boca. Yes, prosecutors are in charge, but the president is entitled—some would say required—to demand harsh justice. The president, known for his eloquence and attention to detail, seemingly unwilling or unable to patiently, carefully explain how the world works—or more important, how it failed.
He can't because he has no idea how the world works. He never had to learn that because he had never had to stand up to a challenge before.
Obama's worst problems are yet to come, though. Somewhere, someone is holding his birth certificate in his hand. Or her hand. And that someone is hungry for more power than she currently has. When the time is right - when Obama's approval ratings are low enough - that someone will slide a copy of that birth certificate under the office door of the appropriate newspaper editor.