The real reason Obama is "weak"
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The real reason Obama is "weak"
I've seen a lot of Internet chatter recently that Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report is no longer at the top of his game (whatever that game was.) Maybe that's true. For years Drudge managed to present a version of reality that many found compelling even as that reality had, in contrast to the famous Stephen Colbert-ism, a pronounced right-wing bias. So when I saw the headline today that "Obama is chosing to be weak" and that the source was the staid Financial Times, I instinctively glanced over my right shoulder.
I should have looked to the left.
On energy, columnist Clive Crook writes:
The cap-and-trade bill is a travesty. Its net effect on short- to medium-term carbon emissions will be small to none. This is by design: a law that really made a difference would make energy dearer, hurt consumers and force an economic restructuring that would be painful for many industries and their workers. Congress cannot contemplate those effects. So the Waxman-Markey bill, while going through the complex motions of creating a carbon abatement regime, takes care to neutralise itself.
On healthcare:
The crux of the US healthcare problem is the incentives that encourage over-production and over-consumption of services. Addressing that would alter the way healthcare is paid for and delivered to all Americans. At that scary prospect, Congress looks away. Debate thus revolves around how much of an increase in coverage you can buy for $1,000bn over 10 years in subsidies and other outlays. That is a good question. But legislators aim to duck the bigger challenge: controlling long-term growth in costs per patient.
I don't know about Matt Drudge, but I happen to agree that Obama's weakness isn't taking America too far to the left, but that he's not nearly bold enough. Over the last year, watching Obama win election and take office at the same time I was writing and then promoting a book about Ronald Reagan, I've pondered the similarities and differences between the two men. Their politics are quite different, and I believe that much of Reaganism was and remains wrong-headed -- ironically, Reagan's lack of energy realism and his support for right-wing dictators in Central America continue to inform today's headlines.
But I will say this about Reagan -- he was bold when people expected him to seek the kind of soft compromises that Obama seems prone to embracing on some issues. That was most true with the Gipper's 1981 tax cut, which no one expected to pass a Democratic Congress intact but in the end pretty much did. Reagan achieved some of that by reaching out directly to the American people; I see Obama now planning this approach on healthcare but I wonder if it's too little, too late. What's more, I'm not so sure that Matt Drudge and his biggest fans really wants Obama to be that "strong."
The punchline to all of this is that tonight, Drudge has taken down the link to the Financial Times story while he plays out that Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Castro government are joining the American president in denouncing the Honduran coup, and with this headline: "Nanny State: White House announces new lighting standards." I guess he realized his mistake.
Obama appears weak because he is. He has no foundation from which to push back against his opponents. He is still in campaign mode, when vacuous is a virtue. His kindergarten view of the world puts the US in a weak position when we need to bluff our way through until the nuke plants come on line. Nothing like discussing health care with a cigarette in one's mouth.— Joe Funk- Surprise surprise, Obama is a moderate. Just like Clinton but the neocons would not have you believe it based on their rants. I prospered under the Democrats and lost pace under the GOP.— Think for myself
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- But Will, Obama has a Congress dominated by his own party (with a San Francisco nut as Speaker of the House, to boot!), unlike the Reagan tax cut example you cite. He's never had to be strong before because the media was so much in love with him (this never gets old: http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/democratic-debate/229112/). That may be ending, however, thus forcing His Majesty out of his comfort zone. I'm not a fan of Newsweek, but I do respect Howard Fineman's approach; he has an interesting take on the end of Obama's media honeymoon (which I still contend was a major force in his win over Clinton in the primaries): "Barack Obama does not like to be surprised—or worse, to be seen being surprised. Nor does he like his motives questioned. His reaction to any of this, I know from personal experience, is a wide grin (akin to the baring of teeth) and a dismissive rhetorical question, as in "What do YOU think?" It happens in the blink of an eye; if you don't pay attention, you miss the antagonism. -- I do sense that, after the comparatively sunny days of his first five months in office, the pattern is changing in the meteorological map of the national media—and in the president's own comfort with his journalistic surroundings. -- Obama has had such warm relations with most of the national media (he even jokes about it) that he is tempted to use them in ways that can sound like propaganda. A case in point: the recently televised town hall about health care. Even supporters of the president's reform effort found the hour soporific and pretty one sided—and conservatives and Republicans were not unjustifiably dismissive. If you play all your games on your home court, your record is suspect. Another case: the cheesy way in which the White House used a presidential press conference to choreograph a question from Iran that had been solicited by a Huffington Post editor who was invited specifically for the purpose of passing on the question."— Vandy
Of course most of us who believe that Obama has the right ideas about most domestic and foreign issues (not counting transparency any more) are disappointed that not much seems to be happening. But I think that if you pay attention, you will see that a lot of smaller issues are moving right along, even as health care and climate change seem to drag. Congress is a big problem--think of the 40 Democrats who voted against the climate bill. International events move along at their own pace, so dealing with Iran or even Honduras has to be fit into the way of the world. While I wish Obama was more of a liberal, I knew before he was elected that he was more middle-of-the-road. People who believed the Republic propaganda expected something different, but if you paid attention to what he actually said he was going to do, then you should not be surprised (except about transparency).- "Congress is a big problem--think of the 40 Democrats who voted against the climate bill." I agree, but I think of the 211 Democrats who voted FOR that bill (and its 300-page junk amendment) as supportive!— Vandy
- Seriously, Archimedes, Obama has the most enabling Congress he could want. Even with those 40 Democrats with a modicum of common sense, the cap-and-tax bill passed the House, right? The stimulus that he weakly turned over to Pelosi et al passed without a single Republican vote at all, for goodness sake! So, from a Democratic standpoint, what's the problem?— Vandy
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- Now it's coming out that Sanford has had "several" affairs. At least some of the more responsible Republicans are calling for his resignation. His "Apology Tour 2009" is getting old. Buh-bye.— Think for myself
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- ---}}} The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, ---}}} Would that be Alan Carlin, the economist - in which he lifted entire sections from material written by "experts" that have been completely discredited for bogus "science" funded to promote partisan analysis? LOL!!! Here's just a snippet of what actual experts have to say about your memo, batyboy ---snip-- One can see a number of basic flaws here; the complete lack of appreciation of the importance of natural variability on short time scales, the common but erroneous belief that any attribution of past climate change to solar or other forcing means that CO2 has no radiative effect, and a hopeless lack of familiarity of the basic science of detection and attribution. But it gets worse, what solid peer reviewed science do they cite for support? A heavily-criticised blog posting showing that there are bi-decadal periods in climate data and that this proves it was the sun wot done it. The work of an award-winning astrologer (one Theodor Landscheidt, who also thought that the rise of Hitler and Stalin were due to cosmic cycles), a classic Courtillot paper we've discussed before, the aforementioned FoS web page, another web page run by Doug Hoyt, a paper by Garth Paltridge reporting on artifacts in the NCEP reanalysis of water vapour that are in contradiction to every other reanalysis, direct observations and satellite data, a complete reprint of another un-peer reviewed paper by William Gray, a nonsense paper by Miskolczi etc. etc. I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to compete with the four rounds of international scientific and governmental review of the IPCC or the rounds of review of the CCSP reports…. --snip--— Talking point sleuth
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- Just so I fully understand you, batboy. Your contention is that the EPA is "ignoring" a report, full of completely discredited science, without any peer-reviewed evidence, written by an economist, about the science of climate change? LOL! Actually, batboy, "Obama's EPA" IS to be believed, and the EPA decided that this guy is writing memos on issues where he has no expertise, that were full of discredited information. Maybe you should just go back to posting comments about how you're "jealous" of adulterous, lying governors who abandon their elected responsibilities to do someone "exotic?"— Talking point sleuth
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