« Turkey In The Fire (Guest Voice)
Gallup: Public supports Obama, Democrats over GOP on stimulus by wide margin »
Is Obama Still Running for Election?
With the stimulus package battle seeming to draw toward a close, President Obama is packing his bags and heading out for a town hall meeting in Indiana. The timing may seem spot on, but the venue raises some questions.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says Obama wants to go where the nation’s economic problems are “acute” as part of his “his effort to convince Congress to move swiftly.”
This area did not vote for Obama in November, but The Elkhart Truth newspaper is on board with that message now. “President Obama needs to help Congress understand that the stimulus package isn’t about politics. It’s about survival,” the newspaper said in a Sunday editorial.
Monday’s visit will be Obama’s third trip to Elkhart — he stopped by twice during the presidential campaign — but his first trip outside Washington as president to meet face-to-face with average citizens.
In a quasi-retrospective way of thinking, this might almost make sense. Obama has been on the campaign trail for so long that he likely doesn’t even remember operating in any other mode. He ran a strong and obviously effective election battle by taking his message directly to the people as often as possible in any venue that would offer him a soap box and a crowd. But if I may be so bold as to offer an observation and a suggestion to the Commander in Chief… the election is over. You won. Now there are irons in the fire that require tending and it’s time to get to work.
There is still time to try to drag Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into a room with the Republican leadership and turn this into Obama’s bill, rather than some Frankenstein creation of the DNC. I’m not talking about “fixing” the current bill by tomorrow night. What he could do, however, is put the brakes on for a few days or a couple of weeks. We were rushed over a cliff on TARP and we’ve all seen how that worked out. With a little more time this project could still be chopped up into three pieces:
Things we can do now
Things we can do in 2010 and 2011
Democratic spending items in a future omnibus bill
From all the reactions I’m seeing in the mainstream press, a suggestion like the one above is viewed as rank insanity, but for the life of me I can’t see why. If Obama allows this bill to slide through under the Democratic leadership’s knuckle, his vision of a post-partisan, new America working together for a bright future melts into just another four year cycle of political rhetoric which we’ve heard far too many times before. Today is the time to be in the trenches salvaging what will doubtless be one of the defining moments of Obama’s first (and if he’s lucky, not only) term. It’s not a moment to drop back into election mode and head off for a campaign rally.
8 Responses to “Is Obama Still Running for Election?”
Honestly, do you think a delay of a few more days or a few more weeks would result in a better bill? Remember: it isn't you or I creating the stimulus bill from scratch. It's a bunch of elected officials carrying all sorts of ideological and political assumptions with them. My guess is that a delay would merely be the first step to getting nothing – not a better bill. I'm sure the Republicans would love that but I doubt the American people would.
I would prefer no bill to a bad bill. I think the recent concerns over the TARP money illustrates how important it is to get this right. A delay of a few days or weeks is a drop in the bucket.
Obama is making a serious strategic (and losing) blunder in trying to salvage this lousy bill. Obviously if the Congressional Dems (notably those in the House) would choose to cease being “HUA” about this, and grow up, and get real, an acceptable bill could be produced without little effort or time needed. It's a bad blunder by Obama in particular given the public supports intervention and it probably not only accepts, but favors more spending than tax reductions. It's not Obama's bill, but the House Dems' disgusting bill.
As you got it correctly, Jazz: “There is still time to try to drag Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into a room with the Republican leadership and turn this into Obama’s bill, rather than some Frankenstein creation of the DNC.”
This bill deserves to die if it its glaring worst defects are not remediated, especially after the bank bailout experiences to date.
“Honestly, do you think a delay of a few more days or a few more weeks would result in a better bill?”
??? Obviously this bill could and should easily be improved, and that only takes days — what's this “weeks” stuff and what's with questioning the blatantly obvious ease of correcting and improving this bill?
[...] Jazz Shaw can’t understand why Obama and the Democrats don’t see that: If Obama allows this bill to slide through under the Democratic leadership’s knuckle, his vision of a post-partisan, new America working together for a bright future melts into just another four year cycle of political rhetoric which we’ve heard far too many times before. Today is the time to be in the trenches salvaging what will doubtless be one of the defining moments of Obama’s first (and if he’s lucky, not only) term. It’s not a moment to drop back into election mode and head off for a campaign rally. [...]
Campaign appearance (“town hall meeting”) in Indiana
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/02/09/live-b…
Well taking a close look at this bill might reveal some really ugly things.
Last years Democratic version of the GI bill had a nice little paragraph in their that could be interpeted by a court of law as Amnesty for Illegal aliens.
No telling what CRAP is buried in this bill when we have TIME to look at it.
The economy is doing poorly. Unemployment is increasing at a rapid pace.
Republicans stymied a stimulus bill last September because the price was too high.
Since then, the economy has only gotten worse.
Republicans have very loudly and publicly done what they could to reduce the amount of spending in the current bill. Which is to say, arguable, they've cut stimulus from this bill.
If the bill works, Republicans will get no credit at all for the improvement. If it doesn't work, they'll be subject to the argument that it's their fault nothing got done in September '08 and not enough got done in February '09.
History will show this bill was popular at the time.
And you know what current history shows about the Republicans who are now saying no to spending? History will say then exactly what it says right now: That when Republicans ran the show, they ran up enormous debts. Republicans ran up huge debts when they ran the government. Look it up. Go ahead.
The current concern Republicans have for such things is going to look as hollow then as it does now.
It's the House bill that is the superior version. The CBO estimates that the Senate bill will result in between 430,000 and 538,000 fewer jobs than the House version.